No matter how precise and demanding an author is, the reader always brings understanding, misunderstanding, interpretation, and their own preconceptions to a work.
There are several schools of literary interpretation, which argue and debate and grapple incessantly, and some of which are almost violently hostile to each other, but if you were to ask them WHETHER the written word is interpreted (rather than just received), they would pretty much all look at you like you had three heads.
I've had to reinstall it about 5 times. I've fought with it to get it to recognize games I have installed. For someone without limitless free time, auto updating (especially without knowing how long it's going to take) just cuts into what little gaming time I have. I hate having to shut down my net connection just to run Steam if I want to enjoy my 30 minute gaming window instead of spending 10 minutes updating.
It's stopped working, lost games, and yes, it has switched me to Steam-related messages while I'm playing.
I just happen to think it's a bad model. At the very least I should be able to tell it "pretend this is standalone" when installing, but I can't. I understand why they did it, but it doesn't make me any happier with the product.
Forget it, dude, they aren't listening. They've got a SlashMeme, and they aren't going to let facts get in the way!
But seriously, elections are always going to have a certain amount of abuse, whether it's tampering (Chicago), legal challenges (Florida & Washington), stuffing (Venezuela) or death threats and imprisonment (Iran).
I don't know the Canadian history of voting well enough, but I'd bet there have been tampering and scandals there, too.
I worry less about mechanisms than processes, in this case, but I'll admit the US processes aren't open enough. That's partly because we have a thousand different systems. Centralization/standardization would allow fraud on a level we have not yet seen. They'd also require constitutional amendments by the score (Fed & State).
It's nowhere near as simple as gaming the highway funding system so the Feds can write state DUI laws.
Unfortunately, like everything else political, the gamesmanship has overwhelmed the intent of the process - representation. And no doubt we'll fumble along with our little vote scams like before.
Best of luck to the Dutch, though. (Jeez, there was a topic?)
I think the fact that other companies can manage to make their software work with the existing API, but that SYmantec is too lazy to code but can send lawyers to make threats, says a hell of a lot more about Symantec than it does about MS.
I hope the new API hooks don't become a security hole, and if it does, I hope the blame gets placed where it belongs - but I know it won't.
Many years ago, symantec was pretty good. Then again, maybe it's that Norton was good before Symantect bought them.
In either case, when people ask what AV software they should use, the first words out of my mouth are "not Norton." It's already buggy, rude, and stupid - I have wasted almost as much time cleaning up Norton as I have cleaning up viruses and malware!
I have an oddball background (some people have it worse). I've tried about 9 different formats and I always get a 50/50 love-hate response. That part's probably normal and I'm being paranoid.:)
I always find that, on forms like Monster's, there's always one or two required fields I can't correctly/honestly fill in the way they want it. I tend to find the automated formats "unflattering," but there you are.
It's a hot job market, though. Sometimes it doesn't seem that way, but that's because it's a very competetive one as well.
Umm, did I miss the part where Bush did, or threatened to, or mentioned "shutting down the internet?"
How would he gain control over foreign servers? Would he nationalize the backbone companies?
Who's more likely to tamper with the nameservers (or the backbone), the US, China, Cuba, Iran?
It's a "brutal power grab" for those in charge of the nameservers to NOT give them up? How can a NON-CHANGE be a power grab?
Nameservers and ICANN are a "stranglehold?"
Does all that really make sense to you?
The US has a pretty good (not perfect) record on letting internet traffic and sites do what they want, here or abroad. And a generally pretty good record on free speech. Neither can be said for one of the biggest pushers for "WICANN," China, or a lot of their followers-on. Matter of fact, Europe ain't too hot on free speech eaither, though nothing like China or Cuba.
I think broadband internet and region-free players have made both region coding and staggered releases less desirable. I'm really hoping that the movie industry sees the light, because while staggered releases used to make sense (I didn't say good for the customer, I said made sense):
1) The "big selling season" for movies has been spreading across the calendar - it may be that we're heading toward a year-round market. (Obviously there are movies all year, but the big summer and winter seasons are no longer as exclusive as they were.
2) Broadband internet allows people to get pirated movies even more easily than the dreaded bootleg DVD - and faster.
3) As if the dreaded bootleg DVD wasn't bad enough, since the DVD standard was established the market has generated region-free players (several years ago) which are now so widespread that frequently "late" movie market viewers can obtain "early" market legit DVDs before the movie hits the theaters.
Region coding is a zombie. Zombies can be hard to kill, however. (How many people are running pirated copies of software that they OWN because they can skip the registration/copy protection schemes?)
I'm still not seeing anything that shows them to be disingenuous. Maybe they are, but here I'm seeing name-calling and an ASSUMPTION that they're not being forthright. It's not like they're hiding the policies they support or who supports them.
How is that "pretending to be objective" or "not up-front and honest?" Do you know if these people held these opinions before they got paid for it?
I'm just saying that the post I responded to, and your response to me, don't prove anything other than you like to make assumptions, unless you have more knowledge of these PFF people than you're revealing.
If you do have that knowledge, please share. If not, then I can only assume that you assume that you are SO right that no one could honestly disagree with you, therefore anyone who does disagree with you must be doing so with an ulterior motive. Which makes discussion impossible.
I'm not arguing the main point of the thread now, just why some people can't say "I think you're wrong" without adding "and lying scheming and underhanded."
So if an advocate has corporate donors, they're automatically tied to corpoorate interests and can't be considered objective? For example, if EFF took donations from Sun, UnitedLayer, Symantec and Adobe? Not to mention Slashdort users...:)
Like I said, it looks you're assuming that the causes YOU support have honest representation, and the ones you oppose are shills. I'm not assuming these PFF people are slimy liars any more than I'm assuming that they've got it all right.
From their website, I'd say their biggest obvious offense is Buzzwording everything.
Yeah, that's what we need, bureaucrats mandating complex out-of-date standards. Not only is such a system probably legally impossible in the US, it would definitely be immediately suborned by users buying newer, non-standard tech.
When you have slow-moving markets (Radio in the 20s & 30s, TV in the 40s & 50s), government standards can smooth things out. When you have a market like computer tech, the government's layers of bureaucracy and millions of pages of codes and regulations just slow things down.
And frankly, if the government wasn't that slow, Really Bad Things would happen much faster (well-intenioned or not). Ask an economist for details.
Funny how your interests are principled but your opposition's interests aren't. I'm sure they say the same thing about you.
Too bad understanding someone else's POV is less fun than trashing it.
I ain't saying they're right, I'm just saying.
I mean, did it occur to anyone here for even a second that maybe these people believe what they're saying, and sought support from like-minded donors, as opposed to being "shills" and "whores?" Or is that honor reserved for the EFF or whomever YOU happen to support?
Are we going to have + and - recordables for each of these standards? Would you like a +/-R+/-B+/-H+/-C DVD recorder war?
Here's my hazy analysis. I think it's partly an artifact of how fast markets move today, so fast that sometimes standards can't settle and you end up with embedded markets for multiple standards. The real tragedy of this is that manufacturing prices fall slower (because of duplication of effort), and that slows new development (and keeps profits lower than they might otherwise be, and thus sector growth, investment etc). It's wasteful, but kind of inevitable (unless you like totalitarian standard implementation, which we might get if the UN manages to wrest control from ICANN & DoC - with countries like China deciding core internet policy).
I guess what I'm saying is that I understand standards wars dragging on, but I don't like it. Perhaps its time for "consumer groups" or for that matter "industry groups" to start taking sides on standards, just to cut the wars short. It hardly matters which standard, but the whole point of a standard is to avoid incompatability and duplication of effort, and that seems to have been lost.
So to buy something, you have to swipe your card, have your thumb scanned, look into the retinal scanner, provide saliva, stool, and urine samples. To get your Dove bar and Chocolate Milk.
"Cash."
The more complicated these systems become, the less retailers will want to deal with it. I mean, Discover can't be the first one to do this or no one will take Discover anymore.
I don't mean to be disrespectful, but did you see the movie? 'Cause from your description it doesn't seem like you did. Or you slept through a lot of it. Or you decided to hate it before you saw it.
Hey, maybe it just wasn't your kind of movie.
But the fights with the reavers, counting the space battle, were maybe 5-7% of the movie? And the whole main plot of the movie was about where the Reavers came from.
It just seems like you missed most of the movie. The relationshipse between the crew? The whole intro with the Operative, his self-description throughout the movie, the hints about him by Book and Inara?
Did you miss all the parts about River being the subject of an experiment to make humans into weapon systems? The relationship with her brother and the captain?
I can understand not liking the movie, but you seem to have missed it almost entirely.
$10 million on opening weekend, US only. Openings later in the rest of the world, and we've still got a few more weeks in the theaters (at least some theaters).
There's been a big fan push in the UK, Australia, Germany, France... Yeah, I can see $80 million.
The really funny part is how many people keep posting complaints about Microsoft's new product after the fact that Microsoft isn't doing it has been posted here several times.
Fact-checking is fast on the internet, but not yet effective.
From your posts I'd assume you'd have some idea how rare suppressed rifle fire is in combat, and how loud suppressed rifle fire is?
While someday that may be an issue, not a lot of Syrian, Jordanian or Iranian insurgents or Baathists holdovers are packing.300 Whisper ARs with massive liquid-fed suppressors. Which wouldn't be effective at 800 meters anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Fiction is always interactive.
No matter how precise and demanding an author is, the reader always brings understanding, misunderstanding, interpretation, and their own preconceptions to a work.
There are several schools of literary interpretation, which argue and debate and grapple incessantly, and some of which are almost violently hostile to each other, but if you were to ask them WHETHER the written word is interpreted (rather than just received), they would pretty much all look at you like you had three heads.
Well, if opinion polls dictate legitimacy, then perhaps the last time we had a LEGITIMATE government was before 1776.
Or maybe we've just let sour grapes get so out of control that we can't cope with losing anymore.
I guess the next couple of switchovers will tell.
It's not just expensive - I can't get these people to return my calls!
I've got five paintings, two of which have been "informally valued" at considerable prices - but I literally can't get appraisers to return my calls.
I even called literally 50 galleries trying to find someone to help me - zippo.
So, there they sit. It seems that more and more industries these days just don't want my money
It's like going to a car dealership and being told "we don't have any salespeople today, try back next year."
And no, I'm not adding anything useful to the discussion, just griping.
Heh. Not everyone feels the same way about Steam.
I've had to reinstall it about 5 times. I've fought with it to get it to recognize games I have installed. For someone without limitless free time, auto updating (especially without knowing how long it's going to take) just cuts into what little gaming time I have. I hate having to shut down my net connection just to run Steam if I want to enjoy my 30 minute gaming window instead of spending 10 minutes updating.
It's stopped working, lost games, and yes, it has switched me to Steam-related messages while I'm playing.
I just happen to think it's a bad model. At the very least I should be able to tell it "pretend this is standalone" when installing, but I can't. I understand why they did it, but it doesn't make me any happier with the product.
I'm glad it works well for you, though!
Forget it, dude, they aren't listening. They've got a SlashMeme, and they aren't going to let facts get in the way!
But seriously, elections are always going to have a certain amount of abuse, whether it's tampering (Chicago), legal challenges (Florida & Washington), stuffing (Venezuela) or death threats and imprisonment (Iran).
I don't know the Canadian history of voting well enough, but I'd bet there have been tampering and scandals there, too.
I worry less about mechanisms than processes, in this case, but I'll admit the US processes aren't open enough. That's partly because we have a thousand different systems. Centralization/standardization would allow fraud on a level we have not yet seen. They'd also require constitutional amendments by the score (Fed & State).
It's nowhere near as simple as gaming the highway funding system so the Feds can write state DUI laws.
Unfortunately, like everything else political, the gamesmanship has overwhelmed the intent of the process - representation. And no doubt we'll fumble along with our little vote scams like before.
Best of luck to the Dutch, though. (Jeez, there was a topic?)
I think the fact that other companies can manage to make their software work with the existing API, but that SYmantec is too lazy to code but can send lawyers to make threats, says a hell of a lot more about Symantec than it does about MS.
I hope the new API hooks don't become a security hole, and if it does, I hope the blame gets placed where it belongs - but I know it won't.
Many years ago, symantec was pretty good. Then again, maybe it's that Norton was good before Symantect bought them.
In either case, when people ask what AV software they should use, the first words out of my mouth are "not Norton." It's already buggy, rude, and stupid - I have wasted almost as much time cleaning up Norton as I have cleaning up viruses and malware!
The "people will get it eventually" provision will not work with lawyers.
MS is making these changes in response to legal threats, so common sense doesn't enter into it.
The what function?
- Pretty much every dev team in the world
I have an oddball background (some people have it worse). I've tried about 9 different formats and I always get a 50/50 love-hate response. That part's probably normal and I'm being paranoid. :)
I always find that, on forms like Monster's, there's always one or two required fields I can't correctly/honestly fill in the way they want it. I tend to find the automated formats "unflattering," but there you are.
It's a hot job market, though. Sometimes it doesn't seem that way, but that's because it's a very competetive one as well.
Loser-pays, man. Loser-pays.
Sure.
Mind you, the "target market" leans a little more toward small/mid-size office than home office.
Though I'm sure the hobby-minded with lots of spare older PCs will give it a shot.
Myself, for hy home network, I'm stickin' with mah Linksys.
Umm, did I miss the part where Bush did, or threatened to, or mentioned "shutting down the internet?"
How would he gain control over foreign servers? Would he nationalize the backbone companies?
Who's more likely to tamper with the nameservers (or the backbone), the US, China, Cuba, Iran?
It's a "brutal power grab" for those in charge of the nameservers to NOT give them up? How can a NON-CHANGE be a power grab?
Nameservers and ICANN are a "stranglehold?"
Does all that really make sense to you?
The US has a pretty good (not perfect) record on letting internet traffic and sites do what they want, here or abroad. And a generally pretty good record on free speech. Neither can be said for one of the biggest pushers for "WICANN," China, or a lot of their followers-on. Matter of fact, Europe ain't too hot on free speech eaither, though nothing like China or Cuba.
I think broadband internet and region-free players have made both region coding and staggered releases less desirable. I'm really hoping that the movie industry sees the light, because while staggered releases used to make sense (I didn't say good for the customer, I said made sense):
1) The "big selling season" for movies has been spreading across the calendar - it may be that we're heading toward a year-round market. (Obviously there are movies all year, but the big summer and winter seasons are no longer as exclusive as they were.
2) Broadband internet allows people to get pirated movies even more easily than the dreaded bootleg DVD - and faster.
3) As if the dreaded bootleg DVD wasn't bad enough, since the DVD standard was established the market has generated region-free players (several years ago) which are now so widespread that frequently "late" movie market viewers can obtain "early" market legit DVDs before the movie hits the theaters.
Region coding is a zombie. Zombies can be hard to kill, however. (How many people are running pirated copies of software that they OWN because they can skip the registration/copy protection schemes?)
I'm still not seeing anything that shows them to be disingenuous. Maybe they are, but here I'm seeing name-calling and an ASSUMPTION that they're not being forthright. It's not like they're hiding the policies they support or who supports them.
How is that "pretending to be objective" or "not up-front and honest?" Do you know if these people held these opinions before they got paid for it?
I'm just saying that the post I responded to, and your response to me, don't prove anything other than you like to make assumptions, unless you have more knowledge of these PFF people than you're revealing.
If you do have that knowledge, please share. If not, then I can only assume that you assume that you are SO right that no one could honestly disagree with you, therefore anyone who does disagree with you must be doing so with an ulterior motive. Which makes discussion impossible.
I'm not arguing the main point of the thread now, just why some people can't say "I think you're wrong" without adding "and lying scheming and underhanded."
So if an advocate has corporate donors, they're automatically tied to corpoorate interests and can't be considered objective? For example, if EFF took donations from Sun, UnitedLayer, Symantec and Adobe? Not to mention Slashdort users...
Like I said, it looks you're assuming that the causes YOU support have honest representation, and the ones you oppose are shills. I'm not assuming these PFF people are slimy liars any more than I'm assuming that they've got it all right.
From their website, I'd say their biggest obvious offense is Buzzwording everything.
Yeah, that's what we need, bureaucrats mandating complex out-of-date standards. Not only is such a system probably legally impossible in the US, it would definitely be immediately suborned by users buying newer, non-standard tech.
When you have slow-moving markets (Radio in the 20s & 30s, TV in the 40s & 50s), government standards can smooth things out. When you have a market like computer tech, the government's layers of bureaucracy and millions of pages of codes and regulations just slow things down.
And frankly, if the government wasn't that slow, Really Bad Things would happen much faster (well-intenioned or not). Ask an economist for details.
Funny how your interests are principled but your opposition's interests aren't. I'm sure they say the same thing about you.
Too bad understanding someone else's POV is less fun than trashing it.
I ain't saying they're right, I'm just saying.
I mean, did it occur to anyone here for even a second that maybe these people believe what they're saying, and sought support from like-minded donors, as opposed to being "shills" and "whores?" Or is that honor reserved for the EFF or whomever YOU happen to support?
Are we going to have + and - recordables for each of these standards? Would you like a +/-R+/-B+/-H+/-C DVD recorder war?
Here's my hazy analysis. I think it's partly an artifact of how fast markets move today, so fast that sometimes standards can't settle and you end up with embedded markets for multiple standards. The real tragedy of this is that manufacturing prices fall slower (because of duplication of effort), and that slows new development (and keeps profits lower than they might otherwise be, and thus sector growth, investment etc). It's wasteful, but kind of inevitable (unless you like totalitarian standard implementation, which we might get if the UN manages to wrest control from ICANN & DoC - with countries like China deciding core internet policy).
I guess what I'm saying is that I understand standards wars dragging on, but I don't like it. Perhaps its time for "consumer groups" or for that matter "industry groups" to start taking sides on standards, just to cut the wars short. It hardly matters which standard, but the whole point of a standard is to avoid incompatability and duplication of effort, and that seems to have been lost.
Hey, it happens. :)
So to buy something, you have to swipe your card, have your thumb scanned, look into the retinal scanner, provide saliva, stool, and urine samples. To get your Dove bar and Chocolate Milk.
"Cash."
The more complicated these systems become, the less retailers will want to deal with it. I mean, Discover can't be the first one to do this or no one will take Discover anymore.
Maybe Orson made his review more about him than Serenity, and maybe he didn't.
But Slashdotters have definitely made this thread more about him than Serenity!
I don't mean to be disrespectful, but did you see the movie? 'Cause from your description it doesn't seem like you did. Or you slept through a lot of it. Or you decided to hate it before you saw it.
Hey, maybe it just wasn't your kind of movie.
But the fights with the reavers, counting the space battle, were maybe 5-7% of the movie? And the whole main plot of the movie was about where the Reavers came from.
It just seems like you missed most of the movie. The relationshipse between the crew? The whole intro with the Operative, his self-description throughout the movie, the hints about him by Book and Inara?
Did you miss all the parts about River being the subject of an experiment to make humans into weapon systems? The relationship with her brother and the captain?
I can understand not liking the movie, but you seem to have missed it almost entirely.
$10 million on opening weekend, US only. Openings later in the rest of the world, and we've still got a few more weeks in the theaters (at least some theaters). There's been a big fan push in the UK, Australia, Germany, France... Yeah, I can see $80 million.
The really funny part is how many people keep posting complaints about Microsoft's new product after the fact that Microsoft isn't doing it has been posted here several times.
Fact-checking is fast on the internet, but not yet effective.
That's not insightful. It's pathetic.
So if you have a tool that can take you from (random numbers) 80% chance of survival to 95%, but you don't want it because it's not 100%.
I guess the perfect really is the enemy of the good.
From your posts I'd assume you'd have some idea how rare suppressed rifle fire is in combat, and how loud suppressed rifle fire is?
.300 Whisper ARs with massive liquid-fed suppressors. Which wouldn't be effective at 800 meters anyway.
While someday that may be an issue, not a lot of Syrian, Jordanian or Iranian insurgents or Baathists holdovers are packing