It always amazes me to see people jump on the Kyoto bandwagon.
The US SHOULD NOT sign the Kyoto protocol. Not only does it not hold most of the worst pollution producing countries in the world to ANY standard what-so-ever, but it also puts the US at a significant disadvantage compared to not only China but the EU.
To top it off, the Kyoto protocol is estimated to have negligable impact on global warming, even with Perfect compliance by all nations ratifying it.
I think most people who use the library as their means of accessing the net are pretty much computer illiterate and don't think twice about requesting passwords/etc via a library terminal and have it sent to their hotmail account.
I think your giving the average person way, way, too much credit.
I also dont think the average library terminal user has a clue how to snoop through the cache, look at history, etc.. they just login, go to the websites they want/need to see, and logoff without a second thought about what kind of digital trail they just left.
However, I agree with you on your last statement - Overhype. Libraries and other places with public terminal access have a responsiblity to NOT install this stuff if everyone uses a shared login.
If they have throw-away logins so that each user who logs in gets a unique username, and the temp user is deleted after the session is done, then i can't see what problem there is with installing a tool like this.
interestingly enough, the last time I was at the library, I logged on just to see what was there, opened Word, opened the last opened file, and it was some woman's letter to a judge explaining why she was in jail the past year and begging the judge to let her see her kids.
People don't think about consequences because they have no idea there is a consequence to using a public terminal. its as simple as that.
Don't forget, she would be sniffing, pulling her hair, or doing something totally obnoxious and condescending toward anyone else while smoothing her dress.... A luxuriant cloth wrapping, whose texture is so soft and luxuriant even a harden warrior of the Stone Dogs might shed a precious tear to think about. The dress, was of course, cut in a style that was once fashionable among the larger houses of Tear, back before the War of the Dragon when Lews Therin tore the world asunder and tainted the male half of the One Power.....[continuing on for 2 pages]...the low cut bodice showed more clevage than typcially appropriate for an Aes Sedai but her green shawl laid seductively over her shoulder obscuring and hinting at what lay beneath. The shawl, fringed yet slightly tattered from the many battles this particular Aes Sadai had faced while at the side of her good, blue, friend So'me Girlwi'pow'er; a formidable Aes Sedai in her own right who will be introduced here so that you, the good reader, might wonder if there is a bit of foreshadowing going on. Of course, there isn't, at least not for anything that will happen in any of the next 7 subsequently shorter in length, yet longer in production, novels of the series. However, when convenient, so that I can string the series, and my fans out even more, I will reintroduce So'me Girlwi'pow'er in book 18 as she comes back as the daughter of the Dark One, a forgotten forsaken that nobody ever really knew about, but now she is a convienient plot element that will help me sell another few million books....[another four pages go on]..and finally the dress is smooth enough for the Aes Sedai to look disdainfully upon you and sniff yet again as she pulls her braid and thinks "Men, such as waste, except for..."...
you can see images of the "leaked" designs at: http://www.engadget.com/entry/9253838747326816/ they have pretty good bandwidth so will hopefully be less likey to be subject to the/. effect
But I like the way this thing looks - I won't give up my iPod to go out and buy it - but I dont agree that it is ugly.
As far as UI goes, well I have no idea if the little thumbwheel is any good - but I can't imagine it being great. If your going to scroll through hundreds of songs something a bit faster seems in order, unless you can "pull" the wheel toward you to make fast scrolling, and roll it for slow scrolling then that wouldn't be so bad.
call it what you want, it's still breaking the law. As I said, I don't agree with the tactics used by the RIAA but rationalizing illegality just doesnt' cut it.
and this is a bit different, sorry to say, than the examples you produce. Someone else isn't going into the studio and creating their own music based exactly off of some bands. They are taking the original art, making digital duplicates of it and distributing it for free.
Anyway, as much as I dislike the whole act of defending the right to distribute others work freely (or on the part of those who take the work for free (stealing in my mind)) I'm just as sick of hearing about how the artists aren't making any money because of file sharing. Gimme a break. Has anyone seen that show Cribs on MTV? EVER? Some of these people have spent the GNP of many small countries combined on cars alone.
The sorriest part of this whole thing is the sympathy people continue to show for the folks who are being sued. Look, I'm no fan of the RIAA's strong-arm tactics but if you STEAL, regardless of the logic you use when doing so, you run the risk of getting caught and being punished.
I can't believe my eyes everytime I read posts like this on slashdot when even the title is purely sympathetic to the theives. This isn't robin hood and prince john folks. Nobody is stealing from the rich to give to the poor - they are just stealing.
If any of these people went into a store and stole a CD or Tape and got caught they wouldn't be the sympathetic "victim".
Nobody forced anyone to steal the music; now someone is just forcing them to pay for it.
This is absolutly stupid, and demeaning
on
Virtual Girlfriend
·
· Score: 1
This is as dumb an idea as I have ever heard. Let's latch onto some of the worst possible stereo-types of geekdom and women at the sametime and make a game.
Yes, your a loser and you need a virtual girlfriend - and guess what, she is a petty, money hungry thing at that.
Or, maybe there just isn't sufficient ROI to deal with each nations ideosynchrocies. Removing the map, rather than maitaining and versioning yet another file (and thus taking up time in someones already busy schedule fixing real problems, adding features, etc..) probably just wasn't an area that MS (or many other companies) would have felt was worth the investment.
So instead, they cut out a feature that, at any given time, could change and thus cause new allegations of insensitivity.
It isn't as if geopolitical differences are limited to the small sampling addressed in the article. I'm sure there is an entire cataloge of issues that might arise with each change in power in many countries.
The source of the problem is not only Microsoft. Sure, in some of these examples they could have addressed the problems in a more careful manner; however, some of the problems are just the nature of the ever changing political landscape beast that is our world.
or maybe you just haven't worked at the right place.
some companies actually do care about their employees, their way of life, and their standard of living, and will go to great lengths to secure all of the above for their workers.
the company I work at is one such place. im sorry you have had such bad experiences.
The Memeitc AI Toolkit sounds very cool - it is really amazing what some people have been able to do, in what is presumably their spare time, for a game.
I was a bit disappointed in NWN when it came out - but that was in part due to the fact that I was following it from its announcment date back in 1999 at e3 - so no matter how hard I tried to keep expectations down I still failed.
Perhaps, I will download this library and give NWN another look - thanks for the link.
I have a catchall at one of my domains and have spam assassin set to filter a high rate - then everything else is forwarded on to the account I use the most. I then have popfile filter it further, and finally thunderbird finalizes the spam filtering and I get all the imporant mail sent to the catchall but none of the spam.
I could probably cut popfile out of the loop - except using its header modification it is much easier to filter all the email from all of my accounts into one set of folders in thunderbird - since thunderbird insists on using a different folder structure for each email account.
How do you people keep track of all of the patents that are issued? Is there a mailing list or something that announces patent approvals? If not what are you doing? Do you work at the patent office? How do you have the time to find out who has gotten what patent (bogus or otherwise)?
It always amazes me when I see these posts on/. simply because I don't understand how the poster intially becomes privy to such information.
Maybe the uspto has some kind of search engine that lets you type in recipient names and returns to you all patents held by that entity (in date awarded order no less)..
There is no reason for the broadband companies to lower their rates - at least not in their eyes. It would be foolish. If people are willing to pay the current rates, and based on the new subscriber numbers they clearly are, then the cable companies should NOT lower their rates (at least not from a business model perspective).
Sure, customers would love to see the rates drop. But, as long as people are willing to pay a certain price for a service and there is not sufficient competitive reason to lower the price the rate will stay much higher than dialup.
Quite frankly, I feel I get good value for my money paying the price I do for broadband. Granted, Im in the US and the rates here may (or may not) be significantly different from those elsewhere in the world - i dunno.
for example a PATRIOT missle system battery in the US Army consists of 8 launchers (each holding 4 missiles) well that was PATRIOT I, I think the newer PATRIOT II can hold 16 missiles per launcher.
A Battery in the US Army is the Air Defense portion of the Army equivilent to a Company in the rest of the Army such as Engineers or Infantry.
So far I haven't liked it much. I thought Cryptonomicon was 'OK' but not that great. In both I find the same annoying tendency of Stephenson trying to show off how much he knows.
He goes off on these long asides at times describing some technology as if the reader doesn't know anything at all about it. If I wanted an encylopedia I would have bought one. Does he really think non-tech minded people are going to buy his books? I mean, really, how much interest does cryptography have to the non-geek?
I have fought through quicksilver hoping something interesting would happen and have been sorely disappointed. Thankfully it was a gift. I will not buy the next book(s) in the series as I don't think they would be worth the time to read.
Slashdot Mirror
It always amazes me to see people jump on the Kyoto bandwagon.
The US SHOULD NOT sign the Kyoto protocol. Not only does it not hold most of the worst pollution producing countries in the world to ANY standard what-so-ever, but it also puts the US at a significant disadvantage compared to not only China but the EU.
To top it off, the Kyoto protocol is estimated to have negligable impact on global warming, even with Perfect compliance by all nations ratifying it.
a company actually already does this so you dont have to wait for longhorn:
http://www.desktopsidebar.com/
I tried it out and it is OK. nothing special but kinda handy.
i'm still looking for something with a smaller footprint.
just a thought but your recommendation system should be tweaked a little.
A good example of a place where this is whacky: I clicked on ashlee simpson - and the recommendations were:
I didn't see the parent say anything about RECENT - he/she just said I hope no one here is using Outlook/Outlook Express.
Your rush to judgement led you to infer the author meant RECENT - when in fact they may have meant any version.
I think most people who use the library as their means of accessing the net are pretty much computer illiterate and don't think twice about requesting passwords/etc via a library terminal and have it sent to their hotmail account.
I think your giving the average person way, way, too much credit.
I also dont think the average library terminal user has a clue how to snoop through the cache, look at history, etc.. they just login, go to the websites they want/need to see, and logoff without a second thought about what kind of digital trail they just left.
However, I agree with you on your last statement - Overhype. Libraries and other places with public terminal access have a responsiblity to NOT install this stuff if everyone uses a shared login.
If they have throw-away logins so that each user who logs in gets a unique username, and the temp user is deleted after the session is done, then i can't see what problem there is with installing a tool like this.
interestingly enough, the last time I was at the library, I logged on just to see what was there, opened Word, opened the last opened file, and it was some woman's letter to a judge explaining why she was in jail the past year and begging the judge to let her see her kids.
People don't think about consequences because they have no idea there is a consequence to using a public terminal. its as simple as that.
Don't forget, she would be sniffing, pulling her hair, or doing something totally obnoxious and condescending toward anyone else while smoothing her dress.... A luxuriant cloth wrapping, whose texture is so soft and luxuriant even a harden warrior of the Stone Dogs might shed a precious tear to think about. The dress, was of course, cut in a style that was once fashionable among the larger houses of Tear, back before the War of the Dragon when Lews Therin tore the world asunder and tainted the male half of the One Power.....[continuing on for 2 pages]...the low cut bodice showed more clevage than typcially appropriate for an Aes Sedai but her green shawl laid seductively over her shoulder obscuring and hinting at what lay beneath. The shawl, fringed yet slightly tattered from the many battles this particular Aes Sadai had faced while at the side of her good, blue, friend So'me Girlwi'pow'er; a formidable Aes Sedai in her own right who will be introduced here so that you, the good reader, might wonder if there is a bit of foreshadowing going on. Of course, there isn't, at least not for anything that will happen in any of the next 7 subsequently shorter in length, yet longer in production, novels of the series. However, when convenient, so that I can string the series, and my fans out even more, I will reintroduce So'me Girlwi'pow'er in book 18 as she comes back as the daughter of the Dark One, a forgotten forsaken that nobody ever really knew about, but now she is a convienient plot element that will help me sell another few million books....[another four pages go on]..and finally the dress is smooth enough for the Aes Sedai to look disdainfully upon you and sniff yet again as she pulls her braid and thinks "Men, such as waste, except for..."...
who says 10k in the US isn't much? Hell, it would be a great addition to MY bank account.
maybe you should consider taking up a career of looking for conspiracies while your at it.
gimme a break.
im just glad they used the God of Drummings name for this. Neal Peart deserves recognition - that man is awesome on the drums!
you can see images of the "leaked" designs at: http://www.engadget.com/entry/9253838747326816/ they have pretty good bandwidth so will hopefully be less likey to be subject to the /. effect
thats one of the funniest things I have ever seen on slashdot. thanks for the laugh
But I like the way this thing looks - I won't give up my iPod to go out and buy it - but I dont agree that it is ugly. As far as UI goes, well I have no idea if the little thumbwheel is any good - but I can't imagine it being great. If your going to scroll through hundreds of songs something a bit faster seems in order, unless you can "pull" the wheel toward you to make fast scrolling, and roll it for slow scrolling then that wouldn't be so bad.
call it what you want, it's still breaking the law. As I said, I don't agree with the tactics used by the RIAA but rationalizing illegality just doesnt' cut it.
and this is a bit different, sorry to say, than the examples you produce. Someone else isn't going into the studio and creating their own music based exactly off of some bands. They are taking the original art, making digital duplicates of it and distributing it for free.
Anyway, as much as I dislike the whole act of defending the right to distribute others work freely (or on the part of those who take the work for free (stealing in my mind)) I'm just as sick of hearing about how the artists aren't making any money because of file sharing. Gimme a break. Has anyone seen that show Cribs on MTV? EVER? Some of these people have spent the GNP of many small countries combined on cars alone.
The sorriest part of this whole thing is the sympathy people continue to show for the folks who are being sued. Look, I'm no fan of the RIAA's strong-arm tactics but if you STEAL, regardless of the logic you use when doing so, you run the risk of getting caught and being punished. I can't believe my eyes everytime I read posts like this on slashdot when even the title is purely sympathetic to the theives. This isn't robin hood and prince john folks. Nobody is stealing from the rich to give to the poor - they are just stealing. If any of these people went into a store and stole a CD or Tape and got caught they wouldn't be the sympathetic "victim". Nobody forced anyone to steal the music; now someone is just forcing them to pay for it.
This is as dumb an idea as I have ever heard. Let's latch onto some of the worst possible stereo-types of geekdom and women at the sametime and make a game.
Yes, your a loser and you need a virtual girlfriend - and guess what, she is a petty, money hungry thing at that.
gimme a break.
Or, maybe there just isn't sufficient ROI to deal with each nations ideosynchrocies. Removing the map, rather than maitaining and versioning yet another file (and thus taking up time in someones already busy schedule fixing real problems, adding features, etc..) probably just wasn't an area that MS (or many other companies) would have felt was worth the investment. So instead, they cut out a feature that, at any given time, could change and thus cause new allegations of insensitivity. It isn't as if geopolitical differences are limited to the small sampling addressed in the article. I'm sure there is an entire cataloge of issues that might arise with each change in power in many countries. The source of the problem is not only Microsoft. Sure, in some of these examples they could have addressed the problems in a more careful manner; however, some of the problems are just the nature of the ever changing political landscape beast that is our world.
or maybe you just haven't worked at the right place. some companies actually do care about their employees, their way of life, and their standard of living, and will go to great lengths to secure all of the above for their workers. the company I work at is one such place. im sorry you have had such bad experiences.
The Memeitc AI Toolkit sounds very cool - it is really amazing what some people have been able to do, in what is presumably their spare time, for a game. I was a bit disappointed in NWN when it came out - but that was in part due to the fact that I was following it from its announcment date back in 1999 at e3 - so no matter how hard I tried to keep expectations down I still failed. Perhaps, I will download this library and give NWN another look - thanks for the link.
I have a catchall at one of my domains and have spam assassin set to filter a high rate - then everything else is forwarded on to the account I use the most. I then have popfile filter it further, and finally thunderbird finalizes the spam filtering and I get all the imporant mail sent to the catchall but none of the spam. I could probably cut popfile out of the loop - except using its header modification it is much easier to filter all the email from all of my accounts into one set of folders in thunderbird - since thunderbird insists on using a different folder structure for each email account.
Flamebait sucks - and this is about as bad as it gets.
How do you people keep track of all of the patents that are issued? Is there a mailing list or something that announces patent approvals? If not what are you doing? Do you work at the patent office? How do you have the time to find out who has gotten what patent (bogus or otherwise)? It always amazes me when I see these posts on /. simply because I don't understand how the poster intially becomes privy to such information.
Maybe the uspto has some kind of search engine that lets you type in recipient names and returns to you all patents held by that entity (in date awarded order no less)..
I don't understand, what is "Very Important" about supporting Manga?
Very important seems like an awfuly stong sentiment to me.
There is no reason for the broadband companies to lower their rates - at least not in their eyes. It would be foolish. If people are willing to pay the current rates, and based on the new subscriber numbers they clearly are, then the cable companies should NOT lower their rates (at least not from a business model perspective).
Sure, customers would love to see the rates drop. But, as long as people are willing to pay a certain price for a service and there is not sufficient competitive reason to lower the price the rate will stay much higher than dialup.
Quite frankly, I feel I get good value for my money paying the price I do for broadband. Granted, Im in the US and the rates here may (or may not) be significantly different from those elsewhere in the world - i dunno.
for example a PATRIOT missle system battery in the US Army consists of 8 launchers (each holding 4 missiles) well that was PATRIOT I, I think the newer PATRIOT II can hold 16 missiles per launcher.
A Battery in the US Army is the Air Defense portion of the Army equivilent to a Company in the rest of the Army such as Engineers or Infantry.
So far I haven't liked it much. I thought Cryptonomicon was 'OK' but not that great. In both I find the same annoying tendency of Stephenson trying to show off how much he knows.
He goes off on these long asides at times describing some technology as if the reader doesn't know anything at all about it. If I wanted an encylopedia I would have bought one. Does he really think non-tech minded people are going to buy his books? I mean, really, how much interest does cryptography have to the non-geek?
I have fought through quicksilver hoping something interesting would happen and have been sorely disappointed. Thankfully it was a gift. I will not buy the next book(s) in the series as I don't think they would be worth the time to read.