I'd hope it would be obvious to most people, but I wouldn't want to use this for any mission critical computers. I imagine the reliablility issues are just horrible. There are so many reasons aluminum cases have been the norm. Flaky manufacuturer hardware and softwar eare enough without having to worry about EM shielding, air circulation, and dirt.
In case it gets/.'ed, I've made a mirrot at this site.
What kind of interference will this cause? If everyone with with 802.11 capabilities starts broadcasting, will it cause any problems? I've heard bluetooth and things like microwaves and 2.4 GHz cordless phones don't get along so well with this technology.
I realize people may think of this as a luxury, but there are many people that don't have the ability to speak. From crippling diseases to the negative effects of a lifetime of smoking, some people simply cannot use their vocal chords. I know I'd find his handy next time I'm sick with a sore throat!
I'd also have to say this should be made mandatory for all people that would otherwise force me to listen to their loud cell phone conversations.
I think this is proof against one of the arguments creationist wackos have been making for quite a long time. They always ask how can life be created out of nothing.. I seem to remember reading a while ago that another scientist conducted an experiment in which he applied electricity to a sort of cocktail of chemicals and he also managed to create amino acids- though admitedly this was not in a vacuum. Can't find a link, unfortunately.
I used to be a devoted mac user, and I still am deep down in my heart. But one incident drove me to the Wintel world. Back in the mid 1990's (I think it was 1995 or 1996) I bought an Apple-clone from Power Computing. It was a killer machine, and having been a Mac user since its origin I really enjoyed buying a top of the line computer for a somewhat affordable price. Had it not been for the competition, I would probably not been able to afford buying a new computer.
But, as soon as Apple decided to buy back the licenses it had sold to the clone companies, enough was enough. Apple had abandoned me as a consumer of their product, the MacOS, so I was going to abandon them. I have not bought a single product of theirs since, and have built countless Wintel machines.
My suggestion: bring back hardware licensing! It will increase market share and increase the purchases of their OS, where the real money is at anyway.
This "Steam" content delivery system raises my eyebrows, and it should raise yours as well. We live in a world driven by advertising, especially through media such as the web and TV. I wouldn't hesitate to think that some bright executive would get the idea in his head to use this for marketing purposes.
From the article: With it, we can market and have direct communication with customers, sales and distribution
This doesn't sound like directly downloading games. This sounds like the company taking over your computer and forcing you to watch an advertisement for their product, then "allowing" you to purchase it with a single click of the mouse.
At present, the amount of advertising on the web is becoming increasingly intrusive, but we still have one advantage- we can choose (for the most part) when we want to be abused. I have pity for people whose employment requires them to surf the web as they have no choice when they are forced to endure such pop-up banner misery. With "Stream", the Internet may very well turn into what the modern day telephone has become, a boon for telemarketers and con artists alike. They can choose when they wish to interrupt us, whether it be from a family meal or our favorite TV shows, to allow them the high likelyhood that we can be reached, as the demographics have clearly been researched on such common behavioral patterns.
I, for one, will take this new technology with a grain of salt. It may just step over the fine line between spyware and trojans, and while on paper it may look like a great idea, I would caution those who think being early adopters would be a rewarding experience.
So are you saying you are more entitled to the bandwidth than other people who pay the same amount simply because you "need to have" it? All users of the same service are paying for the same bandwidth, if they want to use it 24x7 they can. If the ISP has a problem with that, they can institute a capping system, like AT&T Cables 1.5 Mb down and 128 Kb up system. Their system is more than able to handle traffic at that capacity even in a neighborhood in which their service is popular.
Step 1: Register at DHS for a Dynamic/Static Subdomain (Free)
Step 2: Redirect traffic from your family domain to the dynamic one.
Step 3: Install Linux on a nice 486 with ~32 MB RAM and at least a 1 GB HD
Step 4: Install apache , sendmail, perl, and maybe webmin if you are completely unfamiliar with Linux.
Step 5: If you want a web front end for your email system, try out NeoMail
Step 6: That's about it, you'll have to mess with the configration files before it runs, but it's worth it. The fact that all your email is automagically downloaded to your local machine is just an added bonus.
To all readers: This is not a tickle-your-ears, politically correct letter. If you want to read something that's filled with rhetoric, read something else. If you want the truth, then read this letter. In the rest of this letter, I will use history and science (in the Hegelian sense) to prove that Sen. Fritz Hallings offers his apparatchiks a vehicle of sorts for their revenge fantasies. If he wants to complain, he should have an argument. He shouldn't just throw out the word "incontrovertibleness", for example, and expect us to be scared. He can get away with lies (e.g., that all it takes to solve our social woes are shotgun marriages, heavy-handed divorce laws, and a return to some mythical 1950s Shangri-la), because the average person cannot imagine anyone lying so brazenly. Not one person in a hundred will actually check out the facts for himself and discover that Sen. Hallings is lying.
Does he actually think his arguments through, or does he just chug along on his computer writing about whatever trite politics happen to suit his needs that day? I ask, because I'm willing to accept that his blatant indifference towards the feelings of others is due to intense misunderstanding, suspicion, and fear. I'm even willing to accept that it is easy to see from the foregoing that he has lost what little credibility he once had. But he constantly insists that his pronouncements can give us deeper insights into the nature of reality. But he contradicts himself when he says that he knows 100% of everything 100% of the time. Some prolix saboteurs have raised objections to my vituperations, but their objections are all politically motivated. Sen. Hallings has commented that this is the best of all possible worlds and that he is the best of all possible people. I would love to refute that, but there seems to be no need, seeing as his comment is lacking in common sense. I've already said this a thousand times and with a thousand different phrasings, but I frequently talk about how there is every indication that every morning he asks himself, "How can I fool the masses today?". I would drop the subject, except that I myself have never been in favor of being gratuitously ignorant. I have also never been in favor of sticking my head in the sand or of refusing to stand up and fight for our heritage, traditions, and values.
Nonetheless, for the nonce, Sen. Hallings is content to drag men out of their beds in the dead of night and castrate them. But by next weekend, he will spit in the face of propriety. You've heard me say that his drones are all sappy shirkers. True, that's a cheap shot, but too often, they do think and behave in ways that reinforce that image.
Isn't it odd that the worst types of mindless bureaucrats there are, whose libidinous lifestyle will displace meaningful discussion of an issue's merit or demerit with hunch and emotion sooner or later, are immune from censure? Why is that? This isn't such an easy question to answer, but let me take a stab at it: Sen. Hallings's inclinations represent a backward step of hundreds of years, a backward step into a chasm with no bottom save the endless darkness of death. You may not be aware of this, but Sen. Hallings would have us believe that arriving at a true state of comprehension is too difficult and/or time-consuming. Yeah, right.
Even without the bleeding-heart ideology of corporatism in the picture, we can still say that obscurantism is a growing threat to society and should be outlawed. Do I blame society for this? No, I blame Sen. Hallings. As a consistently mortified observer of his double standards, I can't help but want to reveal the nature and activity of his lickspittles and expose their inner contexts as well as their ultimate final aims. Almost without exception, when I'm through with him, he'll think twice before attempting to attack the fabric of this nation. Our goal must now be to expose Sen. Fritz Hallings's memoranda for what they really are. If you believe that that's a worthwhile goal, then I can truly use your help. Let me hear from you.
To start about the SSSCA, if you can go more than a minute without hearing the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act talk about classism, you're either deaf, dumb, or in a serious case of denial. Don't be fooled: The fact of the matter is that if we let the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act leave a generation of people planted in the mud of a pestiferous, insolent world, to begin a new life in the shadows of solipsism, all we'll have to look forward to in the future is a public realm devoid of culture and a narrow and routinized professional life untouched by the highest creations of civilization.
The Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act's operatives constitute the only known species of animal life that is both mammalian and invertebrate. I know you're wondering why I just wrote that. I'll explain shortly, but first, I should state that the space remaining in this letter will not suffice even to enumerate the ways in which the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act has tried to make a mockery of the term "roentgenographic". I won't bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that whenever there's an argument about the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act's devotion to principles and to freedom, all one has to do is point out that the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act's undertakings have a crippling effect on science and technology. That should settle the argument pretty quickly. Let the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act's infernal arguments stand as evidence that the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act's reinterpretations of historic events are built on lies, and they depend on make-believe for their continuation. Before explaining why daft euphuists cause insurmountable trouble for us, I must first act honorably. Essentially, there is something grievously wrong with those devious pinheads who exhibit cruelty to animals. Shame on the lot of them!
The Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act's central role in the promotion of filthy elitism dates back a number of years. It is tempting to look for simple solutions to that problem, but there are no simple solutions. It is unprofessional and more than disgusting to believe that skin color means more than skill and gender is more impressive than genius, yes. But "the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act" has now become part of my vocabulary. Whenever I see someone shred the basic compact between the people and their government, I tell him or her to stop "the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act-ing". That's our situation today, in very rough outline. Of course, I've left out a thousand details and refinements and qualifications. I've not mentioned that the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act treats serious issues callously and somewhat flippantly. And I've ignored racialism altogether. I've simply pointed out one key fact: I find much to disagree with in the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act's complaints.
Fry's (that's where all the good deals on CD-R's are- I just picked up 2 50-pack spindles of 700 MB GQ-32X CD-R's for $7 each) has a website at outpost.com has some decent deals, except you
ll have to pay shipping unless you're close to one of their outlets.
Re:I would wonder...
on
Hawaii Wi-Fi
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Mutual authentication, secure key derivation, dynamic WEP keys, Reauthentication policies, and initialization vector changes. These are all implemented by hi.net and no doubt will be used by any other ISP wishing for a reasonable amount of security.
This, like all things that come to the US from more "liberal" countries will be quite controversial. First there is the translation, second is the censorship, and third is the dubbing.
If you want full frontal nudity in this country, it's easy to find--- try cable tv or your local XXX video store. And there's plenty of it on the net. Besides, what kind of context are we talking about? Nudity per se is not pornography. DBZ has full frontal nudity O__o -- at least in the original Japanese version. Gohan is shown nude after transforming from his oozaru state. And in dragonball, Goku as a child does a fair share of streaking. That's not porno. I've seen my two year old nephew naked, but that doesn't make me a pedophile. Little kids running around naked is no big deal , it happens all the time in real life. Nudity is porno when it is portrayed in a sexually enticing manner, which is certainly not the case in Dragonball.
the fact that this is America and we have different rules from England, France, Spain, Mexico(and Japan) does not by definition make our rules OK, anymore than it makes theirs better than ours. It's the results of those rules that matter.
Changing the "delivery" changes the effect of the story. If you don't believe me, ask any director of theater, film, or television. They tell their actors how to say their lines-- precisely because the delivery must be right. When these changes are made, the major plot is still there, but the effect of the scenes are changed---rarely for the better. The removal of blood takes out a lot of a fight's visual impact. When characters get smacked around but don't bleed, the fight seems less "real." (yes, I know it's a cartoon) Blood and bruises are a visual sign of injury. Without it, the characters do not appear to be hurt, so it looks like they're not really playing for keeps. Dramatic tension is lost. The frustrating thing is that it really is not necessary to remove blood (it's just another of those dumb arbitrary rules >:{ ). Blood in a tv show does not necessarily desensitize viewers to violence. In fact, it can have the opposite effect. What makes the difference is HOW the violence and blood is presented. If it is presented in a way that glorifies killing-- makes killing look fun or cool, etc.-- then it may be a problem. But if presented in a way that demonstrates the negative consequences in a fight, than it's all to the good. That's DBZ for you. The good guys fight when they have to, but they pay for it. Boy, do they pay. They get beat up, smashed, crunched, fried, shot. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they watch friends die. Winning comes at a price-- by the time the bad guy is defeated, everyone who's left is mostly just relieved that it's over. That all may be exciting to watch, but it doesn't exactly make you want to join in their battles! If you have to justify DBZ's violence, you could say that it shows that fighting isn't very good for you. ^__~ Unfortunately, FUNi's edits have blunted that effect of the show. As for the nudity, the main problem I have with the cover-ups is that they look to be exactly that. When something is obviously painted in to cover up naughty bits, it distracts from the scene (remember that convienient little tree in front of Gohan's crotch?) And they cut A LOT of material the first two seasons... I think about ten episodes worth, if I remember right. So out of every episode they showed, a sixth of the material was gone. Much of these edits were not made for content, they were done to eliminate as much of the non-action material as possible. Me, I LIKE the non-action material. My favorite part of DBZ is the characters, character development. A lot of that stuff was hacked out. The dialogue.... well, I'll get into that later. By the way, since when is Frieza an "evil homosexual?" I guess since FUNi gave him an old lady's voice and that...ah...suggestive dialogue (Whatever turns you on, big boy =P). Considering the pains they've gone to removing any sexual suggestiveness from the show, I'm surprised they put that in. And since when is Goku a Christian? I've never heard of any religious sentiment coming from him.
they changed the name because childrens' television producers in this country will not touch anything remotely smelling of religion with a two-hundred foot pole. No matter what kind of hell was represented, somebody would have been screaming about it. If they had presented HFIL as hell, someone would have been pissed that it wasn't fire and brimstone. If the hell had been depicted as fire and brimstone, someone would have been pissed they were "scaring kids" or that they were showing a christian hell and not giving equal time to other religions' ideas. So FUNi changed it, because they knew they just couldn't win. Not their fault, I guess. *sigh* But the point is that Toriyama-san was not trying to represent anyone's idea of hell. Not yours, not catholics', not protestants', NOBODY'S. What he did was to take a variety of ideas on the afterlife from a number of religions, threw them together in a mishmash, and tried to make them as funny as possible. DBZ is not a theology dissertation. Come on, what religion looks on hell as a theme park?? The planet Earth of DBZ is not our Earth. He was not suggesting that this is what the afterlife might actually be like. It was more like, "wouldn't it be funny if..." The whole shebang was A JOKE. SATIRE. NOT MEANT TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY. Unfortunately, America can't take a joke when it comes to religion.
. I understand that dubbing does place some restictions on dialogue, as the lines need to fit the lip movements of the characters. However, that does not mean the scriptwriters need to do a total 180 from the intent of the original lines. I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about. I'll compare a scene as it was done in the dub and as it was shown in the manga. I don't have the fansub for that episode, so that's why I'm using the manga. As I've previously noted, the material in the manga was apparently reproduced in the anime almost verbatim, so I expect the lines in the anime to be pretty similar to the manga. The scene is from issue 7, volume 1 of the manga. I forget what episode it's from and I don't feel like checking right now. I think episode 6 or 7. OK, this scene takes place after Piccolo has abandoned Gohan in the wilderness. Gohan's stuck on top of the giant rock pillar. It's night, he's curled up trying to sleep, whining about being hungry. Two apples appear in front of him, and he goes to eat them.(FUNi cut out the part with the thought bubble showing the picture of an apple tree, who knows why. I thought it was cute.) He bites into one and finds it's sour. (another one of those ridiculous edits on the part of FUNi, it was another cute moment. The picture of his face in the manga is absolutely adorable!) Well, he's hungry enough to eat it anyway. As he's eating, the shot switches to one of Piccolo, who's watching from a distance. Here's his line from the dub: "I know it's hard now, but I'm watching over you." A nice sentiment that doesn't quite match his bared teeth.^__~ Anyway, the scene moves back to Gohan, who has finished his apples and gone back to sleep. The camera pans back to show Piccolo again, who says, "Sleep well... my little friend. ARRGH GAG RETCH SPEW---- oh wait, that's me. =P Here's the dialogue from the manga, as translated by Viz--- who, take note, claims not to edit the dialogue at all. Here's Piccolo's first line, as he's watching Gohan eat: "Cursed brat... is there no end to it?" The next line, after Gohan has fallen asleep: "But wot you well, this is the LAST time... if you cannot survive on your own after this, it only confirms that your uses are as limited as I first thought." Now, if you can't see the difference between these two scenes, I'll have to check your lobotomy scars. The change in tone is dramatic, and it completely alters the viewer's perception of Piccolo. The dub makes it look like he immediately cared about Gohan, whereas the manga makes it clear that he initially regards Gohan as a burden and a nuisiance. He has no interest in whether Gohan lives or dies, save as it may impact the coming fight with the saiya-jins. This makes his eventual sacrifice for Gohan all the more striking. In the dub it doesn't seem like it would be all that out of character for him, so it doesn't seem all that impressive. They didn't HAVE to change the dialogue this way. Piccolo was not speaking aloud in this scene, he was thinking. So they didn't have to make the lines match any lip movements. I can't think of any reason why the dialogue was changed so dramatically, except that they must have decided they wanted a kinder, gentler Piccolo. This really makes me mad. I don't LIKE Piccolo kinder and gentler, I like him rougher and meaner. What, did they think we couldn't take it? It's impossible to really appreciate the depth of the change he undergoes if we can't see just how BAD he was at the start. So yes, FUNi has been changing the characters. And this is not the only example I could give you; they have done it to nearly all the characters at some point. The frustrating thing is that in most instances, the changes ruin some of the more striking aspects of the characters. It's the usual efforts of American tv producers to acheive uniform national blandness.
Some context is necessary to make this more or less shocking. Right now, the tariffs for recordable media are as follows (from http://www.pch.gc.ca/culture/cult_ind/cpb-pdd/arch ives_e.htm):
Audio Cassette Tape > 40 minutes = $0.29
CD-R and CD-RW = $0.21
CD-R Audio, CD-RW Audio, and Minidiscs = $0.77
In 2003, this will nearly double, but the most significant impact is the $/GB: CD-R and CD-RW = $1.23
DVD-R = $2.27
$/GB storage on MP3 player = $21
This is completely unfair for independant artists who release their tracks exclusively in MP3- their fans are effectively paying the recording industry to buy independant music.
Apart from manufacturers' desire not to define the uses of a PC too narrowly, the public interest in flexible computer platforms and open data exchange remains almost entirely absent from this debate. Disney and its cohort are free to view PC's as delivery systems for Mickey Mouse and friends and to make their content available through broadband. But it's an entirely different matter to re-engineer the PC so it becomes simply another appliance.
The PC platform and the Internet to which it connects is the engine of the information revolution as important to our economy and culture as all the movies in Hollywood. A shift from open platforms to closed appliances may be inevitable, as our consumerist desire for trustworthy PC's dovetails with information providers' obsession with control. But we should beware the haste with which some would sacrifice flexibility for control. If we can't at least temper this taming of the chaotic PC, the victims will be competition, innovation and consumer freedom.
Last month the top executives of two of the most powerful media companies in the world traveled to Washington to testify before Congress about the most dangerous threat they face: the American consumer.
Of course they didn't quite phrase it that way. Michael Eisner, chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, complained that the technology industry made it too easy for "people wanting to get anything for free on their television or computer or hand-held device." Peter Chernin, president of the News Corporation, worried that the Internet's "ability to empower the general public" would lead to the online theft of some of the contents of media companies' digital treasuries.
Both men want the next generation of personal computers to be unable to deliver unauthorized movies, music and other content, and they asked that Congress stand ready to intervene if industry failed to deliver the necessary technology to safeguard its products. A lone executive, from Intel, objected. The market, he said, not Congress, should dictate how technology works.
The debate on Capitol Hill between content providers like Disney and those who make the products to deliver that content, like Intel, was really a proxy for a much larger debate: What do we want our technology to do? How do we want it to work? And do we have any say in the matter?
For most forms of current technology, these questions have long been settled. No executives are worried about illegal uses of televisions or coffee makers, for instance, and no consumers need to worry that these appliances will crash or become infected with viruses and we would never accept it if they did. Our TV's and VCR's don't take ill when we watch infected programs, and our refrigerators never require rebooting.
Yet we have come to tolerate such problems from our personal computers. The PC's fundamental and unique unreliability flows from its construction as a so-called flexible platform a mere staging area for many kinds of software. The point (and bane) of a PC is, essentially, to run whatever software it encounters.
There are plenty of reliable computers: the controls of the modern Airbus 340 are fully given over to a computer, and video-game consoles consistently work as advertised, as do Aegis missile cruisers, cellular telephones and digital watches. All contain transistors. Can technologists figure out how to replicate the reliability of airplanes, telephones, watches and televisions in future versions of Windows and Linux, so that a mischievous 12-year-old half a world away can't erase a thousand far-flung hard drives?
Absolutely. In January Bill Gates sent a memo to all Microsoft employees declaring a new, overarching, even revolutionary mandate: Software must be reliable and "trustworthy." This new focus is both welcome and worrisome, because the very steps needed to secure our computers and networks can be the steps that will deaden them to continued innovation and creative uses while opening them to more intrusive monitoring by mainstream technology manufacturers and content providers.
Mr. Gates and the co-captains of his industry are producing blueprints for so-called "trusted" PC's. They will employ digital gatekeepers that act like the bouncers outside a nightclub, ensuring that only software that looks or behaves a certain way is allowed in. The result will be more reliable computing and more control over the machine by the manufacturer or operating system maker, which essentially gives the bouncer her guest list.
And as soon as there are limits on the software a PC can run, there will be limits on what PC users can do. That's exactly what executives like Mr. Eisner and Mr. Chernin want. They'd like software and hardware companies to build PC's to allow a publisher an exquisite level of control over a book or a song or a movie in the hands of a consumer. Trusted PC users might spend $1.95 for a single viewing of the latest Disney animated feature, or they might pay a similar amount for three listens of U2's most recent single. Security, stability, reliability and control.
Users may buy a trusted PC even if it won't show a digital video lent by a friend, because it will act less like a temperamental computer and more like a crash-free super-VCR like the just-released Microsoft X-box. But in the process of "improving" our PC's, the manufacturers and their partners will be able to determine what software will and won't be allowed to run, what we can and can't do with the information to which we're exposed, and what data about our online activities will be collected and sent to the manufacturer or content provider to assist in future marketing.
If you have ever used Mandrake, I'd recommend sending them a donation/voluntary contribution.It even lets you specify what project your money goes too.
The don't make money from you downloading their iso's, so if you don't buy their CD's at least throw them a couple bucks.
From the site: This way of donating is much easier for us than receiving checks or cash via postal mail:-)
Slashdot Mirror
In case it gets /.'ed, I've made a mirrot at this site.
All done!
What kind of interference will this cause? If everyone with with 802.11 capabilities starts broadcasting, will it cause any problems? I've heard bluetooth and things like microwaves and 2.4 GHz cordless phones don't get along so well with this technology.
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
I'd also have to say this should be made mandatory for all people that would otherwise force me to listen to their loud cell phone conversations.
Greg Graffin is the singer from Bad Religion, right? What song is that from?
I think this is proof against one of the arguments creationist wackos have been making for quite a long time. They always ask how can life be created out of nothing.. I seem to remember reading a while ago that another scientist conducted an experiment in which he applied electricity to a sort of cocktail of chemicals and he also managed to create amino acids- though admitedly this was not in a vacuum. Can't find a link, unfortunately.
But, as soon as Apple decided to buy back the licenses it had sold to the clone companies, enough was enough. Apple had abandoned me as a consumer of their product, the MacOS, so I was going to abandon them. I have not bought a single product of theirs since, and have built countless Wintel machines.
My suggestion: bring back hardware licensing! It will increase market share and increase the purchases of their OS, where the real money is at anyway.
From the article:
With it, we can market and have direct communication with customers, sales and distribution
This doesn't sound like directly downloading games. This sounds like the company taking over your computer and forcing you to watch an advertisement for their product, then "allowing" you to purchase it with a single click of the mouse.
At present, the amount of advertising on the web is becoming increasingly intrusive, but we still have one advantage- we can choose (for the most part) when we want to be abused. I have pity for people whose employment requires them to surf the web as they have no choice when they are forced to endure such pop-up banner misery. With "Stream", the Internet may very well turn into what the modern day telephone has become, a boon for telemarketers and con artists alike. They can choose when they wish to interrupt us, whether it be from a family meal or our favorite TV shows, to allow them the high likelyhood that we can be reached, as the demographics have clearly been researched on such common behavioral patterns.
I, for one, will take this new technology with a grain of salt. It may just step over the fine line between spyware and trojans, and while on paper it may look like a great idea, I would caution those who think being early adopters would be a rewarding experience.
With $24.9 billion in sales, I find it unlikely that many companies based in California could afford to donate more than Disney.
So are you saying you are more entitled to the bandwidth than other people who pay the same amount simply because you "need to have" it? All users of the same service are paying for the same bandwidth, if they want to use it 24x7 they can. If the ISP has a problem with that, they can institute a capping system, like AT&T Cables 1.5 Mb down and 128 Kb up system. Their system is more than able to handle traffic at that capacity even in a neighborhood in which their service is popular.
Step 2: Redirect traffic from your family domain to the dynamic one.
Step 3: Install Linux on a nice 486 with ~32 MB RAM and at least a 1 GB HD
Step 4: Install apache , sendmail, perl, and maybe webmin if you are completely unfamiliar with Linux.
Step 5: If you want a web front end for your email system, try out NeoMail
Step 6: That's about it, you'll have to mess with the configration files before it runs, but it's worth it. The fact that all your email is automagically downloaded to your local machine is just an added bonus.
Does he actually think his arguments through, or does he just chug along on his computer writing about whatever trite politics happen to suit his needs that day? I ask, because I'm willing to accept that his blatant indifference towards the feelings of others is due to intense misunderstanding, suspicion, and fear. I'm even willing to accept that it is easy to see from the foregoing that he has lost what little credibility he once had. But he constantly insists that his pronouncements can give us deeper insights into the nature of reality. But he contradicts himself when he says that he knows 100% of everything 100% of the time. Some prolix saboteurs have raised objections to my vituperations, but their objections are all politically motivated. Sen. Hallings has commented that this is the best of all possible worlds and that he is the best of all possible people. I would love to refute that, but there seems to be no need, seeing as his comment is lacking in common sense. I've already said this a thousand times and with a thousand different phrasings, but I frequently talk about how there is every indication that every morning he asks himself, "How can I fool the masses today?". I would drop the subject, except that I myself have never been in favor of being gratuitously ignorant. I have also never been in favor of sticking my head in the sand or of refusing to stand up and fight for our heritage, traditions, and values.
Nonetheless, for the nonce, Sen. Hallings is content to drag men out of their beds in the dead of night and castrate them. But by next weekend, he will spit in the face of propriety. You've heard me say that his drones are all sappy shirkers. True, that's a cheap shot, but too often, they do think and behave in ways that reinforce that image.
Isn't it odd that the worst types of mindless bureaucrats there are, whose libidinous lifestyle will displace meaningful discussion of an issue's merit or demerit with hunch and emotion sooner or later, are immune from censure? Why is that? This isn't such an easy question to answer, but let me take a stab at it: Sen. Hallings's inclinations represent a backward step of hundreds of years, a backward step into a chasm with no bottom save the endless darkness of death. You may not be aware of this, but Sen. Hallings would have us believe that arriving at a true state of comprehension is too difficult and/or time-consuming. Yeah, right.
Even without the bleeding-heart ideology of corporatism in the picture, we can still say that obscurantism is a growing threat to society and should be outlawed. Do I blame society for this? No, I blame Sen. Hallings. As a consistently mortified observer of his double standards, I can't help but want to reveal the nature and activity of his lickspittles and expose their inner contexts as well as their ultimate final aims. Almost without exception, when I'm through with him, he'll think twice before attempting to attack the fabric of this nation. Our goal must now be to expose Sen. Fritz Hallings's memoranda for what they really are. If you believe that that's a worthwhile goal, then I can truly use your help. Let me hear from you.
To start about the SSSCA, if you can go more than a minute without hearing the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act talk about classism, you're either deaf, dumb, or in a serious case of denial. Don't be fooled: The fact of the matter is that if we let the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act leave a generation of people planted in the mud of a pestiferous, insolent world, to begin a new life in the shadows of solipsism, all we'll have to look forward to in the future is a public realm devoid of culture and a narrow and routinized professional life untouched by the highest creations of civilization.
The Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act's operatives constitute the only known species of animal life that is both mammalian and invertebrate. I know you're wondering why I just wrote that. I'll explain shortly, but first, I should state that the space remaining in this letter will not suffice even to enumerate the ways in which the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act has tried to make a mockery of the term "roentgenographic". I won't bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that whenever there's an argument about the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act's devotion to principles and to freedom, all one has to do is point out that the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act's undertakings have a crippling effect on science and technology. That should settle the argument pretty quickly. Let the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act's infernal arguments stand as evidence that the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act's reinterpretations of historic events are built on lies, and they depend on make-believe for their continuation. Before explaining why daft euphuists cause insurmountable trouble for us, I must first act honorably. Essentially, there is something grievously wrong with those devious pinheads who exhibit cruelty to animals. Shame on the lot of them!
The Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act's central role in the promotion of filthy elitism dates back a number of years. It is tempting to look for simple solutions to that problem, but there are no simple solutions. It is unprofessional and more than disgusting to believe that skin color means more than skill and gender is more impressive than genius, yes. But "the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act" has now become part of my vocabulary. Whenever I see someone shred the basic compact between the people and their government, I tell him or her to stop "the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act-ing". That's our situation today, in very rough outline. Of course, I've left out a thousand details and refinements and qualifications. I've not mentioned that the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act treats serious issues callously and somewhat flippantly. And I've ignored racialism altogether. I've simply pointed out one key fact: I find much to disagree with in the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act's complaints.
courtesy of Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator
SquidGuard
Squid should be installed by default on any decent distro.
$0.19/ea- 700 MB GQ 32x 50 pack spindle @ $9.50
$0.30/ea- 700 MB TEAC 8x 50 pack spindle @ $14.99
Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, and Page 5. Good old google!
Read about more about them.
Looks like the pricing is only going to be 24.95 a month for ISDN speeds up to $99.99 for 1 Mb. Doesn't seem like all that bad a deal.
If you want full frontal nudity in this country, it's easy to find--- try cable tv or your local XXX video store. And there's plenty of it on the net. Besides, what kind of context are we talking about? Nudity per se is not pornography. DBZ has full frontal nudity O__o -- at least in the original Japanese version. Gohan is shown nude after transforming from his oozaru state. And in dragonball, Goku as a child does a fair share of streaking. That's not porno. I've seen my two year old nephew naked, but that doesn't make me a pedophile. Little kids running around naked is no big deal , it happens all the time in real life. Nudity is porno when it is portrayed in a sexually enticing manner, which is certainly not the case in Dragonball.
the fact that this is America and we have different rules from England, France, Spain, Mexico(and Japan) does not by definition make our rules OK, anymore than it makes theirs better than ours. It's the results of those rules that matter.
Changing the "delivery" changes the effect of the story. If you don't believe me, ask any director of theater, film, or television. They tell their actors how to say their lines-- precisely because the delivery must be right. When these changes are made, the major plot is still there, but the effect of the scenes are changed---rarely for the better. The removal of blood takes out a lot of a fight's visual impact. When characters get smacked around but don't bleed, the fight seems less "real." (yes, I know it's a cartoon) Blood and bruises are a visual sign of injury. Without it, the characters do not appear to be hurt, so it looks like they're not really playing for keeps. Dramatic tension is lost. The frustrating thing is that it really is not necessary to remove blood (it's just another of those dumb arbitrary rules >:{ ). Blood in a tv show does not necessarily desensitize viewers to violence. In fact, it can have the opposite effect. What makes the difference is HOW the violence and blood is presented. If it is presented in a way that glorifies killing-- makes killing look fun or cool, etc.-- then it may be a problem. But if presented in a way that demonstrates the negative consequences in a fight, than it's all to the good. That's DBZ for you. The good guys fight when they have to, but they pay for it. Boy, do they pay. They get beat up, smashed, crunched, fried, shot. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they watch friends die. Winning comes at a price-- by the time the bad guy is defeated, everyone who's left is mostly just relieved that it's over. That all may be exciting to watch, but it doesn't exactly make you want to join in their battles! If you have to justify DBZ's violence, you could say that it shows that fighting isn't very good for you. ^__~ Unfortunately, FUNi's edits have blunted that effect of the show. As for the nudity, the main problem I have with the cover-ups is that they look to be exactly that. When something is obviously painted in to cover up naughty bits, it distracts from the scene (remember that convienient little tree in front of Gohan's crotch?) And they cut A LOT of material the first two seasons... I think about ten episodes worth, if I remember right. So out of every episode they showed, a sixth of the material was gone. Much of these edits were not made for content, they were done to eliminate as much of the non-action material as possible. Me, I LIKE the non-action material. My favorite part of DBZ is the characters, character development. A lot of that stuff was hacked out. The dialogue.... well, I'll get into that later. By the way, since when is Frieza an "evil homosexual?" I guess since FUNi gave him an old lady's voice and that...ah...suggestive dialogue (Whatever turns you on, big boy =P). Considering the pains they've gone to removing any sexual suggestiveness from the show, I'm surprised they put that in. And since when is Goku a Christian? I've never heard of any religious sentiment coming from him.
they changed the name because childrens' television producers in this country will not touch anything remotely smelling of religion with a two-hundred foot pole. No matter what kind of hell was represented, somebody would have been screaming about it. If they had presented HFIL as hell, someone would have been pissed that it wasn't fire and brimstone. If the hell had been depicted as fire and brimstone, someone would have been pissed they were "scaring kids" or that they were showing a christian hell and not giving equal time to other religions' ideas. So FUNi changed it, because they knew they just couldn't win. Not their fault, I guess. *sigh* But the point is that Toriyama-san was not trying to represent anyone's idea of hell. Not yours, not catholics', not protestants', NOBODY'S. What he did was to take a variety of ideas on the afterlife from a number of religions, threw them together in a mishmash, and tried to make them as funny as possible. DBZ is not a theology dissertation. Come on, what religion looks on hell as a theme park?? The planet Earth of DBZ is not our Earth. He was not suggesting that this is what the afterlife might actually be like. It was more like, "wouldn't it be funny if..." The whole shebang was A JOKE. SATIRE. NOT MEANT TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY. Unfortunately, America can't take a joke when it comes to religion.
. I understand that dubbing does place some restictions on dialogue, as the lines need to fit the lip movements of the characters. However, that does not mean the scriptwriters need to do a total 180 from the intent of the original lines. I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about. I'll compare a scene as it was done in the dub and as it was shown in the manga. I don't have the fansub for that episode, so that's why I'm using the manga. As I've previously noted, the material in the manga was apparently reproduced in the anime almost verbatim, so I expect the lines in the anime to be pretty similar to the manga. The scene is from issue 7, volume 1 of the manga. I forget what episode it's from and I don't feel like checking right now. I think episode 6 or 7. OK, this scene takes place after Piccolo has abandoned Gohan in the wilderness. Gohan's stuck on top of the giant rock pillar. It's night, he's curled up trying to sleep, whining about being hungry. Two apples appear in front of him, and he goes to eat them.(FUNi cut out the part with the thought bubble showing the picture of an apple tree, who knows why. I thought it was cute.) He bites into one and finds it's sour. (another one of those ridiculous edits on the part of FUNi, it was another cute moment. The picture of his face in the manga is absolutely adorable!) Well, he's hungry enough to eat it anyway. As he's eating, the shot switches to one of Piccolo, who's watching from a distance. Here's his line from the dub: "I know it's hard now, but I'm watching over you." A nice sentiment that doesn't quite match his bared teeth.^__~ Anyway, the scene moves back to Gohan, who has finished his apples and gone back to sleep. The camera pans back to show Piccolo again, who says, "Sleep well... my little friend. ARRGH GAG RETCH SPEW---- oh wait, that's me. =P Here's the dialogue from the manga, as translated by Viz--- who, take note, claims not to edit the dialogue at all. Here's Piccolo's first line, as he's watching Gohan eat: "Cursed brat... is there no end to it?" The next line, after Gohan has fallen asleep: "But wot you well, this is the LAST time... if you cannot survive on your own after this, it only confirms that your uses are as limited as I first thought." Now, if you can't see the difference between these two scenes, I'll have to check your lobotomy scars. The change in tone is dramatic, and it completely alters the viewer's perception of Piccolo. The dub makes it look like he immediately cared about Gohan, whereas the manga makes it clear that he initially regards Gohan as a burden and a nuisiance. He has no interest in whether Gohan lives or dies, save as it may impact the coming fight with the saiya-jins. This makes his eventual sacrifice for Gohan all the more striking. In the dub it doesn't seem like it would be all that out of character for him, so it doesn't seem all that impressive. They didn't HAVE to change the dialogue this way. Piccolo was not speaking aloud in this scene, he was thinking. So they didn't have to make the lines match any lip movements. I can't think of any reason why the dialogue was changed so dramatically, except that they must have decided they wanted a kinder, gentler Piccolo. This really makes me mad. I don't LIKE Piccolo kinder and gentler, I like him rougher and meaner. What, did they think we couldn't take it? It's impossible to really appreciate the depth of the change he undergoes if we can't see just how BAD he was at the start. So yes, FUNi has been changing the characters. And this is not the only example I could give you; they have done it to nearly all the characters at some point. The frustrating thing is that in most instances, the changes ruin some of the more striking aspects of the characters. It's the usual efforts of American tv producers to acheive uniform national blandness.
No cache of the other rubber band guns, but it seems to be accessible from the link.
Right now, the tariffs for recordable media are as follows (from http://www.pch.gc.ca/culture/cult_ind/cpb-pdd/arc
Audio Cassette Tape > 40 minutes = $0.29
CD-R and CD-RW = $0.21
CD-R Audio, CD-RW Audio, and Minidiscs = $0.77
In 2003, this will nearly double, but the most significant impact is the $/GB:
CD-R and CD-RW = $1.23
DVD-R = $2.27
$/GB storage on MP3 player = $21
This is completely unfair for independant artists who release their tracks exclusively in MP3- their fans are effectively paying the recording industry to buy independant music.
Apart from manufacturers' desire not to define the uses of a PC too narrowly, the public interest in flexible computer platforms and open data exchange remains almost entirely absent from this debate. Disney and its cohort are free to view PC's as delivery systems for Mickey Mouse and friends and to make their content available through broadband. But it's an entirely different matter to re-engineer the PC so it becomes simply another appliance. The PC platform and the Internet to which it connects is the engine of the information revolution as important to our economy and culture as all the movies in Hollywood. A shift from open platforms to closed appliances may be inevitable, as our consumerist desire for trustworthy PC's dovetails with information providers' obsession with control. But we should beware the haste with which some would sacrifice flexibility for control. If we can't at least temper this taming of the chaotic PC, the victims will be competition, innovation and consumer freedom.
Of course they didn't quite phrase it that way. Michael Eisner, chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, complained that the technology industry made it too easy for "people wanting to get anything for free on their television or computer or hand-held device." Peter Chernin, president of the News Corporation, worried that the Internet's "ability to empower the general public" would lead to the online theft of some of the contents of media companies' digital treasuries.
Both men want the next generation of personal computers to be unable to deliver unauthorized movies, music and other content, and they asked that Congress stand ready to intervene if industry failed to deliver the necessary technology to safeguard its products. A lone executive, from Intel, objected. The market, he said, not Congress, should dictate how technology works.
The debate on Capitol Hill between content providers like Disney and those who make the products to deliver that content, like Intel, was really a proxy for a much larger debate: What do we want our technology to do? How do we want it to work? And do we have any say in the matter?
For most forms of current technology, these questions have long been settled. No executives are worried about illegal uses of televisions or coffee makers, for instance, and no consumers need to worry that these appliances will crash or become infected with viruses and we would never accept it if they did. Our TV's and VCR's don't take ill when we watch infected programs, and our refrigerators never require rebooting.
Yet we have come to tolerate such problems from our personal computers. The PC's fundamental and unique unreliability flows from its construction as a so-called flexible platform a mere staging area for many kinds of software. The point (and bane) of a PC is, essentially, to run whatever software it encounters.
There are plenty of reliable computers: the controls of the modern Airbus 340 are fully given over to a computer, and video-game consoles consistently work as advertised, as do Aegis missile cruisers, cellular telephones and digital watches. All contain transistors. Can technologists figure out how to replicate the reliability of airplanes, telephones, watches and televisions in future versions of Windows and Linux, so that a mischievous 12-year-old half a world away can't erase a thousand far-flung hard drives?
Absolutely. In January Bill Gates sent a memo to all Microsoft employees declaring a new, overarching, even revolutionary mandate: Software must be reliable and "trustworthy." This new focus is both welcome and worrisome, because the very steps needed to secure our computers and networks can be the steps that will deaden them to continued innovation and creative uses while opening them to more intrusive monitoring by mainstream technology manufacturers and content providers.
Mr. Gates and the co-captains of his industry are producing blueprints for so-called "trusted" PC's. They will employ digital gatekeepers that act like the bouncers outside a nightclub, ensuring that only software that looks or behaves a certain way is allowed in. The result will be more reliable computing and more control over the machine by the manufacturer or operating system maker, which essentially gives the bouncer her guest list.
And as soon as there are limits on the software a PC can run, there will be limits on what PC users can do. That's exactly what executives like Mr. Eisner and Mr. Chernin want. They'd like software and hardware companies to build PC's to allow a publisher an exquisite level of control over a book or a song or a movie in the hands of a consumer. Trusted PC users might spend $1.95 for a single viewing of the latest Disney animated feature, or they might pay a similar amount for three listens of U2's most recent single. Security, stability, reliability and control.
Users may buy a trusted PC even if it won't show a digital video lent by a friend, because it will act less like a temperamental computer and more like a crash-free super-VCR like the just-released Microsoft X-box. But in the process of "improving" our PC's, the manufacturers and their partners will be able to determine what software will and won't be allowed to run, what we can and can't do with the information to which we're exposed, and what data about our online activities will be collected and sent to the manufacturer or content provider to assist in future marketing.
If you have ever used Mandrake, I'd recommend sending them a donation/voluntary contribution.It even lets you specify what project your money goes too.
:-)
The don't make money from you downloading their iso's, so if you don't buy their CD's at least throw them a couple bucks.
From the site:
This way of donating is much easier for us than receiving checks or cash via postal mail
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