"He said WoW was WORSE than those. Please. He played daily for a year and then quit with no desire to go back. Try that with heroin."
Well, he didn't say that WoW was more addictive than drugs. He said that he's seen it ruin more lives. He didn't even say that WoW was more likely to ruin someone's life -- just that he's seen it happen more with WoW than with drugs.
Part of this is, of course, because drugs like heroin are illegal and expensive, where WoW is readily available and relatively cheap. But consider his perspective. As a DJ in a club, you'll see some drugs go around, and you'll see (or hear about) people's lives getting ruined as a consequence. As a guild leader in WoW, not only did he see it happen more often, but he was helping it happen.
"They instead ask "What is your phone number?" It caught me off guard the first time, because you can't just say "no" to that question."
Sure you can. It goes like this:
Them: "What's your phone number?" You: "No."
Don't worry about it not making sense, you'll get your point across. Not only that, but the fact that it doesn't immediately make sense will force the cashier to stop and think about it for a moment, however brief. (I say this as someone who's done cashier duty at Best Buy.)
Oh, and if you're feeling particularly cheeky, you can go the extra-confusing route. It's best if you follow it with a question that forces them past the phone-number question, too.
Them: "What's your phone number?" You: "No thanks, I already have one. That'll be cash please, what's the total?"
I am not a lawyer, I have no formal legal knowledge, training, or experience, and I very well could be wrong about this. Keeping that in mind...
> shouldn't part of that be changed to: [...]
For thoroughness maybe, but legally speaking it's the same thing. Lawyers acting on Spamhaus' behalf are effectively the same as Spamhaus acting on its own behalf. That's the entire reason that having a lawyer even works in the first place.
That said, I'm not sure what kind of legal effect it might have if their lawyers really did ignore a direct request/order. You'd think it would be a valid defense, as long as they can prove it. But the law and the courts are so complicated, that I haven't even the foggiest of clues what happens next. Not to mention that, whatever's next, they still need to do it without acknowedging US jursidiction over the original matter.
Sounds like a tough argument to make. I don't envy them. And I hope they have much better counsel now, because they'll need it.
12 Second History Spamhaus listed E360 as spammers E360 sued Spamhaus in an Illinois court, saying that they weren't spammers. Spamhaus said Illinois court has no jurisdiction, take it to Federal courts. E360 sued Spamhaus in a Federal court, saying that they weren't spammers. Spamhaus doesn't show up to Federal court, despite having accepted their jurisdiction. E360 won a default judgement because Spamhaus didn't show up. Spamhaus still said the court had no authority and ignored the judgement. E360 filed for an injunction, asking the court to order either ICANN or the domain registrar to block the Spamhaus domain because Spamhaus ignored the judgement.
It's been said, but I'm saying it again. For Robotic to knowingly code-in and activate a "time bomb" that results in innocent bystanders having their cars trapped in the garage is, in my mind, tantamount to theft. The software is aware of the contents of the garage at all times, so if you can code in any kind of time bomb, it would be trivial to code in one that allows retrieval of parked vehicles, but disallows parking new ones. Instead, Robotic put in code that they knew would trap the vehicles of people who are uninvolved with, and have no knowledge of (and should not *need* to have knowledge of) the licensing dispute.
That's totally irresponsible on Robotic's part, and I really hope there's some succesful lawsuits against them here. Not to mention, though I try to avoid Hoboken anyway, but I sure won't park in this garage.
On thinking deeper about what I wrote, I'm not sure that the "secret number" and its second hash -- one of those ideas I had while in the middle of writing -- actually provides any benefit at all. I'm sure someone else will post an explanation of why, if they even understand my intent behind it in the first place. Which, by the way, was:
If an attacker alters a record, he can -- knowing the hash algorithm -- accurately calculate a new hash. Even if the next record's hash is based on the current record's hash, the hashes could all be recalculated down the line.
The "secret number" was my attempt to prevent this, but I can't think of an implementation that provides the security I intended, while still allowing the hash to be used to detect tampering.
Ok, I've by no means thought this out thoroughly. But here's my thoughts on a system for electronic voting that could work and be uncomplicated. In other words, one whose security can be apparent to the average person without needing a lengthy explanation.
As I see it, the system needs to provide these features:
An accurate electronic record of votes, with adequate protection from tampering.
An anonmymous paper representation of said votes which can be verified by the voter before leaving the booth.
A method of easily verifying paper records against electronic records.
With those goals in mind, here's how I envision the voting process working:
The voting computer is connected to the door or curtain of the booth. When the previous voter opened the door, the screen was blanked, and the computer reset to the beginning of a new vote. When you enter, the screen is unblanked, and you are at the beginning of the voting process.
A touchscreen is in front of you, and is your only method of interaction with the computer. There is a slot below the screen leading to a paper shredder with a transparent bin, and a printer to the left. The printer and its paper feed are not visible or accessible; only a slot which the paper feeds out of.
You record your votes using the touchscreen interface. This should be designed to be as easy and as obvious as possible. For example: using text, pictures, colors (red for republican, blue for democrat, green for green), symbols (elephant, donkey, a Chevy Corvair), and/or any other identifying marks for each candidate. Touch the person you want to vote for, their name and picture fill the screen except for a large, green "yes" button with a checkmark, and a large, red "no" button with an X.
Once voting is complete, the printer kicks into action. The printer produces an easily-readable and unambiguous record of your choices, in a font that can easily and accurately be OCRed. The screen displays a message to the effect of, "Read the printout to ensure your votes were correctly recorded. If the printout is accurate, press RECORD MY VOTE. If it is not accurate, or you would like to change any of your choices, press START OVER." The printout also includes two barcodes. One is a "serial number." This would need to be sufficiently random, but unique, so the paper record can be paired with its database entry. Perhaps a hash of the person's voting data, a timestamp, and a random number? The other is a "secret number," which can be used to verify the consistency of a database entry.
If RECORD MY VOTE is pressed, only then is a database entry created. The database entry consists of which votes were chosen, the serial number printed, and a SHA1/MD5/whatever hash. The hash will be generated from the combination of: the person's voting record, the random serial number, the "secret number" (which is not recorded in the database) and the previous voter's hash (or, if the first voter to use the machine, a random hash). This means that tampering of any one voting record would require knowing the corresponding printout's secret number, and the secret number of every subsequent record in the database, to generate new and accurate hashes.
Your paper voting record is then folded in thirds along pre-printed (maybe even scored) lines to obscure it as you leave the booth. This record is then placed in a box near the exit.
If you choose START OVER, the machine instructs you to place your ballot in the shredder, and the process begins again. A record is made in the database with NO VOTE as the literal entry in every column, with the serial number and secret number on the paper ballot recorded, and a hash generated as usual. This ensures that any paper ballot that should have been destroyed will not be counted, because the computer has a verifiable record that this uniquely-identifiable printout should have been destroyed. Alternatively, the
So I'm sent home with a barcode that -- from anywhere with internet access -- enables me to confirm my vote.
This same system allows anyone else to, from anywhere, force me to verify my vote to them. Your system is open to a different and entirely easier form of voting fraud -- paying off or otherwise coercing voters. Imagine if I offer to give you money if you come back with your barcode, and I can verify you voted for Bush III. Or, I threaten to break your knees if you *don't* come back with said proof.
Another reason is that Germany has laws regarding driving habits. You're not allowed to pass on the right, nor are you allowed to drive for extended periods in the left lane, and you can actually get fined if you're caught doing so. Until they actually put in some driving laws like this in the US...
Those are laws on the books in US, in most states. Certainly in the ones I'm personally familiar with, around the northeast. Some do enforce them -- I've been told never to drive in the left lane on the PA Turnpike. Mostly, though, they don't.
Enforcement of basic traffic laws is a huge issue in the USA. I live in New Jersey, and have roughly a 5.5 mile trip to work. Pretty short, yet on every trip to and from work, I typically see at least two of the following, usually more:
Improper lane change (lack of turn signal or insufficient warning)
Failure to properly signal a turn
Speeding in excess of 10mph over prevailing traffic
Failure to maintain a safe distance between vehicles
One or more brake lights not functioning
Passing on the right (Usually due to...)
Slow traffic failing to keep right
Lack of headlights and/or taillights in dark or rain
Failure to stop for a red light (usually a blatant disregard; driver doesn't even slow down for the yellow)
You see some people pulled over around holidays and the end of the month, but this really is the status quo. The cops are there. The town I live in has one of the best-staffed police departments in the state. But people behave when a cop car is visible, and there aren't enough of them patrolling the worst areas at the worst times.
I swear that employing one police officer solely for traffic enforcement, in an undercover vehicle (a proper one, not a white Crown Vic), to patrol the morning, lunch, and evening rush hours in my town would pay for itself in traffic fines and have an impact on road safety.
It's not a solution in and of itself, but it's a start. We don't need new laws, we need to enforce the existing ones.
"Also, I like the fact that with normal radio I can hear local news, events, sports, traffic, whatever."
It's a good thing that you'll still have your normal radio around, then, isn't it? I don't go to CNN to hear my local news, and I don't go to XM to hear local traffic and weather.
"If you want just music out of your radio, you can get an iPod for really cheap these days."
Let me know how often that iPod plays a song you haven't heard before, or a song you've managed to completely forget about. Or any song that you haven't specifically sought out.
You're right. There's a good chance that ads will show up in increasing numbers on satellite radio in the future. It won't be soon -- XM tried it, with less than 5 minutes per hour of ads, and even those were mostly for their own programming, and quickly took them off of all the music stations.
But what's your point in pointing this out? Does the fact that things may change in the future somehow make XM or Sirius a less attractive proposition now?
If it gets to the point where they're no longer worth the subscription cost, then cancel and go back to terrestrial radio. Until that point, I'll gladly keep paying.
1) Localized content. No reason you can't flip from satellite to terrestrial radio (just the way you flip between stations now) for local stuff. The satellite providers do have a limited amount of local programming -- mostly news and weather -- but just like you wouldn't tune to CNN for your local college football scores, you also shouldn't go to satellite radio for things like detailed local traffic reports.
2) Lower cost. You pay for radio either way. With terrestial radio, you pay with your time -- often 20 minutes or more of ads per hour. That's 33% of your listening time. And for someone like me who hates morning DJ chatter (filling up at least another 33% of the airtime) and has only a 15-20 minute drive to work, that makes terrestrial radio all but useless in the morning, since the odds are stacked against me ever hearing music.
3) Embedding. An XM receiver is built into over 140 cars in the 2006 model year, from Honda to Lexus to Harley Davidson. Sirius is built into many of the same cars, as well as some different ones. Home receivers from Yamaha (and possibly others by now) have XM receivers built in, though they require a $50 antenna.
4) Standardization. Of course the radios don't inter-operate, both XM and Sirius want to lock you into their own service. Fortunately, there are only two providers, they are well known and often reviewed, and will refund you fully if you cancel within a certain time (either 14 or 30 days, I'm not sure).
5) Independent operation. Not sure what you're getting at here. You say that every station handling their own distribution is a good thing, and for terrestrial radio, it may be. But on satellite stations, they aren't competing against each other for your attention. The rock station on 46 really doesn't care if you start listening to the rock station on 47 instead. And that means each station can focus on their specific genre, instead of having to water it down to appeal to a wider audience. It's the reason why, on satellite radio, you can find things like a station that plays nothing but music from Africa 24/7.
They aren't "passing off" the production to a satellite company -- they're *run by* the satellite company. That gives them a lot more freedom than a terrestrial station, whose programming is essentially "passed off" to the advertisers.
Look at it this way: for every bit of business, generally speaking, there's a product (or service) being sold, someone selling it, and someone buying, right?
With terrestrial radio, a lot of people think the radio station is offering music to you, but they're not. A radio station is in the business of selling *you* -- their product -- to their advertisers -- their consumers. The music and the DJs are only there to keep to product on the shelves, as it were.
With satellite radio, you get what you expect. You are the consumer, you are buying music, and you are buying it from the broadcaster. This means that, instead of living to serve the almighty advertiser, the satellite radio station are around to serve *you*.
"All I know is that I installed that update, rebooted and got the first bluescreen I've ever seen on this machine..."
It caused problems for me, too. My HTPC (which is constantly running for obvious reasons) not only automatically downloaded and installed the update, but also automatically rebooted. Now that's bad enough right there. What if it had been recording something? I know I told it to automatically apply updates, but nowhere did I give it my permission to automatically reboot!
Anyway, I was using GRUB for a bootloader, since I've been trying (with little success) to get MythTV to work. For some reason, it didn't survive the reboot this time. Funny, it booted just fine with the exact same hardware just last week. But I get home and decide to watch TV, and instead I'm staring at a GRUB error.
"I remember they once talked about showing ads while shows aired, an almost Truman Show-esque "Joey drinks Coca-Cola" while watching Friends."
That's pretty much how it was in the 1950's. A lot of advertising was accomplished using product placement, or even cheesy game shows whose entire purpose was to promote a product. There's a great clip out there of Fred and Barney of the Flintstones, stopping mid-show to take a Marlboro break, and extoll the virtues of its flavor. And this was radio, but what about the "Captain Midnight" Secret Squadron decoder badge, allowing you to decode secret messages about Ovaltine?
And you know what? I think they should be a little more subtle with it than they were back then, but I'd gladly accept more product placement in exchange for fewer advertisements. (There'd still have to be a few, because your local dry cleaner is never gonna afford a product placement on House, for example.)
Unfortunately, I don't think we'd get the compromise. I think we'd get as many ads as ever, *and* product placement. It's already showing up in some shows.
"So who exactly is going to pay for all the content you want to watch."
Maybe the advertisers will? Just a thought. Seriously, they seem to have no problem paying the broadcasters under the current system, where everyone's free to change the channel whenever they want.
I'm so sick of this sort of whining. "Oh no! The poor broadcasters! If you aren't forced to sit through the advertisements, where will they get thier money?" The fact is, we haven't ever been forced to sit through the advertisements in the entire history of television, or in radio for that matter, and yet we have a larger variety of channels and programming than ever. Maybe, instead of forcing us to watch the ads, maybe they'll just have to make them less mind-numbing. Or make shows that are so good, we'll put up with the ad breaks.
Oh, and as for your comment on the annoying ads being "the ones that work," you're only right in the sense that I remember them. I remember them so I know where not to shop. (The most recent isn't even TV, actually. AIG Insurance sent me an official-looking "Rate Reduction Notice." They aren't my insurance company. If they feel they have to trick me into buying thier insurance, then I'll be sure to not buy it. Oh, I'll remember them alright. So I guess their advertising "worked.")
No. They're getting rid of them completely. Toolbars too. You know, I _did_ link to an entire _series_ of articles that very clearly show the new UI, in depth, with _pictures_ even.
The killer feature is this: the first major UI overhaul in Office since...well, ever.
How much of an improvement is it? Testers are discovering "brand new features" that have been there since Office 95, because they can finally _find_ the settings. No more traversing confusing menus and dialogs to change formatting options. Everything's grouped intelligently, instead of doing things like dumping anything from spell check to collaboration to mail merge into a "Tools" menu. Style-based formatting has been made easier. And best of all, no more toolbars that appear and disappear, and no more task pane.
"I don't watch television, I don't listen to radio, and I don't play games with ads in them. I personally know 0 other people like that."
I think most people would prefer a compromise, to giving things up completely. I know I do.
So, I watch TV, but thanks to my HTPC, I don't watch the ads. I listen to radio, but thanks to XM, I don't listen to ads. And when Planetside added in-game advertising, I blocked Massive's ad servers.
But I've got the same attitude behind it all: If you have a medium where I'm forced to watch your advertising, then you don't get to have my money too. TV has no fast-forward, but I can solve that with time-shifting. A first-person shooter doesn't always give you the opportunity to look away from the ads, but I can block them, too.
So XM's a bit of an exception there. They aren't asking paying customers to listen to ads -- they're soliciting paying customers with the promise of ad-free music, and very, very few ads on the other stations. So with them, instead of saying "I'm paying you money, so I don't have to see ads", I'm saying, "I'm paying you money so I don't have to see ads."
My company -- and it's not that large -- has no problem doing exactly what you suggest. No employee in marketing or accounting has Admin rights on their computers, and very few in Sales do. Those that do, only do because they are hundreds, if not thousands, of miles from the office, and sometimes need to do things like print to a new printer. But even then, it's not a default. We enable it for them when we're presented with a legitimate need.
The CEO of our company has Admin rights on his laptop. He also doesn't install random shit off the internet, though.
I'd like you to explain how using BSD will vastly increase the productivity of my company's employees, when it...
Won't run our shipping software
Won't run our CRM software
Won't run our UPS software (that's Parcel Service, not Power Supply)
Won't run our climate management software for our cold storage rooms
Won't run our timeclock management software
Won't run our financial reporting software
Won't run our graphics design software
Congratulations. You've removed our ability to take orders, design packaging, make shipments, store our product safely, manage our employees, and manage our finances.
I'm serious. I want you to explain. But I know you won't.
We've finally taken the stance of not allowing employees to install ANYTHING on their PCs anymore...
A pefectly good solution. I don't see the problem here, except that you weren't doing that in the first place. Or do you want to run a botnet for someone else?
You're right, if they're allowed to mess with stuff, people *will* fuck it up. So why was this secretary allowed to install random, unapproved software off the internet?
It certainly isn't Google's fault. Don't blame them for your poor (or absent) security.
"It's complete bullshit to just change the model number for different retailers, different years, months, days, etc."
I think you misunderstand. Every bit of major electronics gets updated at least once a year by the manufacturers. Sometimes the difference is purely cosmetic, or some minor bugfixes. Sometimes it's whole new features and new capabilities. There's always something different, it just isn't always something major.
It's worse with computers, you know. A given model doesn't last more than 3 months, typically, before it's replaced with something that maybe has an extra 10gb of hard drive space, or an extra 0.1ghz.
So that's what I meant by "no discernable difference." I guess it was the wrong word, I should have said "no meaningful difference." It's different, just... do you care? If you do, you can buy this year's model at this year's price. If not, get on the highway and go buy last year's model at last year's price.
They do this because they can't have the same thing sitting on the shelf for months or years, or people would be going, hey, why are you charging brand-new prices for this old model? And how come mine doesn't have the patented ImageTron filters, and these ones do, and it's the same model number? So they tweak a little, put a new number on it, and the stock of the old model gets sent to the discounters.
It's in no way, shape, or form an "unfair trade practice." It's called progress, even if it is just baby steps.
So you're going an average speed of 75mph from the moment you leave your home, to the moment you get to the store? Do you live on the median on the highway?
Where I am, you're looking at an average speed of something closer to 50mph, 40 if there's traffic. Seriously, next time you travel somewhere about 50 miles away, mark down the mileage on your odometer, and time yourself, and see what your average speed works out to.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, he didn't say that WoW was more addictive than drugs. He said that he's seen it ruin more lives. He didn't even say that WoW was more likely to ruin someone's life -- just that he's seen it happen more with WoW than with drugs.
Part of this is, of course, because drugs like heroin are illegal and expensive, where WoW is readily available and relatively cheap. But consider his perspective. As a DJ in a club, you'll see some drugs go around, and you'll see (or hear about) people's lives getting ruined as a consequence. As a guild leader in WoW, not only did he see it happen more often, but he was helping it happen.
That's the significance of his comparison.
Sure you can. It goes like this:
Them: "What's your phone number?"
You: "No."
Don't worry about it not making sense, you'll get your point across. Not only that, but the fact that it doesn't immediately make sense will force the cashier to stop and think about it for a moment, however brief. (I say this as someone who's done cashier duty at Best Buy.)
Oh, and if you're feeling particularly cheeky, you can go the extra-confusing route. It's best if you follow it with a question that forces them past the phone-number question, too.
Them: "What's your phone number?"
You: "No thanks, I already have one. That'll be cash please, what's the total?"
I am not a lawyer, I have no formal legal knowledge, training, or experience, and I very well could be wrong about this. Keeping that in mind...
> shouldn't part of that be changed to: [...]
For thoroughness maybe, but legally speaking it's the same thing. Lawyers acting on Spamhaus' behalf are effectively the same as Spamhaus acting on its own behalf. That's the entire reason that having a lawyer even works in the first place.
That said, I'm not sure what kind of legal effect it might have if their lawyers really did ignore a direct request/order. You'd think it would be a valid defense, as long as they can prove it. But the law and the courts are so complicated, that I haven't even the foggiest of clues what happens next. Not to mention that, whatever's next, they still need to do it without acknowedging US jursidiction over the original matter.
Sounds like a tough argument to make. I don't envy them. And I hope they have much better counsel now, because they'll need it.
12 Second History
4
Spamhaus listed E360 as spammers
E360 sued Spamhaus in an Illinois court, saying that they weren't spammers.
Spamhaus said Illinois court has no jurisdiction, take it to Federal courts.
E360 sued Spamhaus in a Federal court, saying that they weren't spammers.
Spamhaus doesn't show up to Federal court, despite having accepted their jurisdiction.
E360 won a default judgement because Spamhaus didn't show up.
Spamhaus still said the court had no authority and ignored the judgement.
E360 filed for an injunction, asking the court to order either ICANN or the domain registrar to block the Spamhaus domain because Spamhaus ignored the judgement.
Check out this Illinois lawyer's take on the matter for the full(er) explanation:
http://blogs.securiteam.com/index.php/archives/66
It's been said, but I'm saying it again. For Robotic to knowingly code-in and activate a "time bomb" that results in innocent bystanders having their cars trapped in the garage is, in my mind, tantamount to theft. The software is aware of the contents of the garage at all times, so if you can code in any kind of time bomb, it would be trivial to code in one that allows retrieval of parked vehicles, but disallows parking new ones. Instead, Robotic put in code that they knew would trap the vehicles of people who are uninvolved with, and have no knowledge of (and should not *need* to have knowledge of) the licensing dispute.
That's totally irresponsible on Robotic's part, and I really hope there's some succesful lawsuits against them here. Not to mention, though I try to avoid Hoboken anyway, but I sure won't park in this garage.
On thinking deeper about what I wrote, I'm not sure that the "secret number" and its second hash -- one of those ideas I had while in the middle of writing -- actually provides any benefit at all. I'm sure someone else will post an explanation of why, if they even understand my intent behind it in the first place. Which, by the way, was:
If an attacker alters a record, he can -- knowing the hash algorithm -- accurately calculate a new hash. Even if the next record's hash is based on the current record's hash, the hashes could all be recalculated down the line.
The "secret number" was my attempt to prevent this, but I can't think of an implementation that provides the security I intended, while still allowing the hash to be used to detect tampering.
As I see it, the system needs to provide these features:
With those goals in mind, here's how I envision the voting process working:
So I'm sent home with a barcode that -- from anywhere with internet access -- enables me to confirm my vote.
This same system allows anyone else to, from anywhere, force me to verify my vote to them. Your system is open to a different and entirely easier form of voting fraud -- paying off or otherwise coercing voters. Imagine if I offer to give you money if you come back with your barcode, and I can verify you voted for Bush III. Or, I threaten to break your knees if you *don't* come back with said proof.
Those are laws on the books in US, in most states. Certainly in the ones I'm personally familiar with, around the northeast. Some do enforce them -- I've been told never to drive in the left lane on the PA Turnpike. Mostly, though, they don't.
Enforcement of basic traffic laws is a huge issue in the USA. I live in New Jersey, and have roughly a 5.5 mile trip to work. Pretty short, yet on every trip to and from work, I typically see at least two of the following, usually more:
You see some people pulled over around holidays and the end of the month, but this really is the status quo. The cops are there. The town I live in has one of the best-staffed police departments in the state. But people behave when a cop car is visible, and there aren't enough of them patrolling the worst areas at the worst times.
I swear that employing one police officer solely for traffic enforcement, in an undercover vehicle (a proper one, not a white Crown Vic), to patrol the morning, lunch, and evening rush hours in my town would pay for itself in traffic fines and have an impact on road safety.
It's not a solution in and of itself, but it's a start. We don't need new laws, we need to enforce the existing ones.
"Also, I like the fact that with normal radio I can hear local news, events, sports, traffic, whatever."
It's a good thing that you'll still have your normal radio around, then, isn't it? I don't go to CNN to hear my local news, and I don't go to XM to hear local traffic and weather.
"If you want just music out of your radio, you can get an iPod for really cheap these days."
Let me know how often that iPod plays a song you haven't heard before, or a song you've managed to completely forget about. Or any song that you haven't specifically sought out.
You're right. There's a good chance that ads will show up in increasing numbers on satellite radio in the future. It won't be soon -- XM tried it, with less than 5 minutes per hour of ads, and even those were mostly for their own programming, and quickly took them off of all the music stations.
But what's your point in pointing this out? Does the fact that things may change in the future somehow make XM or Sirius a less attractive proposition now?
If it gets to the point where they're no longer worth the subscription cost, then cancel and go back to terrestrial radio. Until that point, I'll gladly keep paying.
1) Localized content. No reason you can't flip from satellite to terrestrial radio (just the way you flip between stations now) for local stuff. The satellite providers do have a limited amount of local programming -- mostly news and weather -- but just like you wouldn't tune to CNN for your local college football scores, you also shouldn't go to satellite radio for things like detailed local traffic reports.
2) Lower cost. You pay for radio either way. With terrestial radio, you pay with your time -- often 20 minutes or more of ads per hour. That's 33% of your listening time. And for someone like me who hates morning DJ chatter (filling up at least another 33% of the airtime) and has only a 15-20 minute drive to work, that makes terrestrial radio all but useless in the morning, since the odds are stacked against me ever hearing music.
3) Embedding. An XM receiver is built into over 140 cars in the 2006 model year, from Honda to Lexus to Harley Davidson. Sirius is built into many of the same cars, as well as some different ones. Home receivers from Yamaha (and possibly others by now) have XM receivers built in, though they require a $50 antenna.
4) Standardization. Of course the radios don't inter-operate, both XM and Sirius want to lock you into their own service. Fortunately, there are only two providers, they are well known and often reviewed, and will refund you fully if you cancel within a certain time (either 14 or 30 days, I'm not sure).
5) Independent operation. Not sure what you're getting at here. You say that every station handling their own distribution is a good thing, and for terrestrial radio, it may be. But on satellite stations, they aren't competing against each other for your attention. The rock station on 46 really doesn't care if you start listening to the rock station on 47 instead. And that means each station can focus on their specific genre, instead of having to water it down to appeal to a wider audience. It's the reason why, on satellite radio, you can find things like a station that plays nothing but music from Africa 24/7.
They aren't "passing off" the production to a satellite company -- they're *run by* the satellite company. That gives them a lot more freedom than a terrestrial station, whose programming is essentially "passed off" to the advertisers.
Look at it this way: for every bit of business, generally speaking, there's a product (or service) being sold, someone selling it, and someone buying, right?
With terrestrial radio, a lot of people think the radio station is offering music to you, but they're not. A radio station is in the business of selling *you* -- their product -- to their advertisers -- their consumers. The music and the DJs are only there to keep to product on the shelves, as it were.
With satellite radio, you get what you expect. You are the consumer, you are buying music, and you are buying it from the broadcaster. This means that, instead of living to serve the almighty advertiser, the satellite radio station are around to serve *you*.
For me, that's worth the price they're asking.
That's funny. When *I* talk, I realize there's a difference between teens and little kids.
Namely, little kids are generally frightened by blood and gore, whereas teens (male ones anyway) generally think it's really cool.
So, yes, Oblivion is too graphic for little kids, which is why it was rated Teen.
It caused problems for me, too. My HTPC (which is constantly running for obvious reasons) not only automatically downloaded and installed the update, but also automatically rebooted. Now that's bad enough right there. What if it had been recording something? I know I told it to automatically apply updates, but nowhere did I give it my permission to automatically reboot!
Anyway, I was using GRUB for a bootloader, since I've been trying (with little success) to get MythTV to work. For some reason, it didn't survive the reboot this time. Funny, it booted just fine with the exact same hardware just last week. But I get home and decide to watch TV, and instead I'm staring at a GRUB error.
"I remember they once talked about showing ads while shows aired, an almost Truman Show-esque "Joey drinks Coca-Cola" while watching Friends."
That's pretty much how it was in the 1950's. A lot of advertising was accomplished using product placement, or even cheesy game shows whose entire purpose was to promote a product. There's a great clip out there of Fred and Barney of the Flintstones, stopping mid-show to take a Marlboro break, and extoll the virtues of its flavor. And this was radio, but what about the "Captain Midnight" Secret Squadron decoder badge, allowing you to decode secret messages about Ovaltine?
And you know what? I think they should be a little more subtle with it than they were back then, but I'd gladly accept more product placement in exchange for fewer advertisements. (There'd still have to be a few, because your local dry cleaner is never gonna afford a product placement on House, for example.)
Unfortunately, I don't think we'd get the compromise. I think we'd get as many ads as ever, *and* product placement. It's already showing up in some shows.
"So who exactly is going to pay for all the content you want to watch."
Maybe the advertisers will? Just a thought. Seriously, they seem to have no problem paying the broadcasters under the current system, where everyone's free to change the channel whenever they want.
I'm so sick of this sort of whining. "Oh no! The poor broadcasters! If you aren't forced to sit through the advertisements, where will they get thier money?" The fact is, we haven't ever been forced to sit through the advertisements in the entire history of television, or in radio for that matter, and yet we have a larger variety of channels and programming than ever. Maybe, instead of forcing us to watch the ads, maybe they'll just have to make them less mind-numbing. Or make shows that are so good, we'll put up with the ad breaks.
Oh, and as for your comment on the annoying ads being "the ones that work," you're only right in the sense that I remember them. I remember them so I know where not to shop. (The most recent isn't even TV, actually. AIG Insurance sent me an official-looking "Rate Reduction Notice." They aren't my insurance company. If they feel they have to trick me into buying thier insurance, then I'll be sure to not buy it. Oh, I'll remember them alright. So I guess their advertising "worked.")
"So, they're going to move the menus around?"
No. They're getting rid of them completely. Toolbars too. You know, I _did_ link to an entire _series_ of articles that very clearly show the new UI, in depth, with _pictures_ even.
The killer feature is this: the first major UI overhaul in Office since...well, ever.
7 20.aspx
How much of an improvement is it? Testers are discovering "brand new features" that have been there since Office 95, because they can finally _find_ the settings. No more traversing confusing menus and dialogs to change formatting options. Everything's grouped intelligently, instead of doing things like dumping anything from spell check to collaboration to mail merge into a "Tools" menu. Style-based formatting has been made easier. And best of all, no more toolbars that appear and disappear, and no more task pane.
If you want the details, read the "Why the UI" series in Jensen Harris's blog (he's the program manager for the Office "user experience" team) -- http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/category/11
I think most people would prefer a compromise, to giving things up completely. I know I do.
So, I watch TV, but thanks to my HTPC, I don't watch the ads. I listen to radio, but thanks to XM, I don't listen to ads. And when Planetside added in-game advertising, I blocked Massive's ad servers.
But I've got the same attitude behind it all: If you have a medium where I'm forced to watch your advertising, then you don't get to have my money too. TV has no fast-forward, but I can solve that with time-shifting. A first-person shooter doesn't always give you the opportunity to look away from the ads, but I can block them, too.
So XM's a bit of an exception there. They aren't asking paying customers to listen to ads -- they're soliciting paying customers with the promise of ad-free music, and very, very few ads on the other stations. So with them, instead of saying "I'm paying you money, so I don't have to see ads", I'm saying, "I'm paying you money so I don't have to see ads."
My company -- and it's not that large -- has no problem doing exactly what you suggest. No employee in marketing or accounting has Admin rights on their computers, and very few in Sales do. Those that do, only do because they are hundreds, if not thousands, of miles from the office, and sometimes need to do things like print to a new printer. But even then, it's not a default. We enable it for them when we're presented with a legitimate need.
The CEO of our company has Admin rights on his laptop. He also doesn't install random shit off the internet, though.
I'd like you to explain how using BSD will vastly increase the productivity of my company's employees, when it...
Congratulations. You've removed our ability to take orders, design packaging, make shipments, store our product safely, manage our employees, and manage our finances.
I'm serious. I want you to explain. But I know you won't.
A pefectly good solution. I don't see the problem here, except that you weren't doing that in the first place. Or do you want to run a botnet for someone else?
You're right, if they're allowed to mess with stuff, people *will* fuck it up. So why was this secretary allowed to install random, unapproved software off the internet?
It certainly isn't Google's fault. Don't blame them for your poor (or absent) security.
I think you misunderstand. Every bit of major electronics gets updated at least once a year by the manufacturers. Sometimes the difference is purely cosmetic, or some minor bugfixes. Sometimes it's whole new features and new capabilities. There's always something different, it just isn't always something major.
It's worse with computers, you know. A given model doesn't last more than 3 months, typically, before it's replaced with something that maybe has an extra 10gb of hard drive space, or an extra 0.1ghz.
So that's what I meant by "no discernable difference." I guess it was the wrong word, I should have said "no meaningful difference." It's different, just... do you care? If you do, you can buy this year's model at this year's price. If not, get on the highway and go buy last year's model at last year's price.
They do this because they can't have the same thing sitting on the shelf for months or years, or people would be going, hey, why are you charging brand-new prices for this old model? And how come mine doesn't have the patented ImageTron filters, and these ones do, and it's the same model number? So they tweak a little, put a new number on it, and the stock of the old model gets sent to the discounters.
It's in no way, shape, or form an "unfair trade practice." It's called progress, even if it is just baby steps.
So you're going an average speed of 75mph from the moment you leave your home, to the moment you get to the store? Do you live on the median on the highway?
Where I am, you're looking at an average speed of something closer to 50mph, 40 if there's traffic. Seriously, next time you travel somewhere about 50 miles away, mark down the mileage on your odometer, and time yourself, and see what your average speed works out to.