If you agree to let Altnet's partners download to your hard drive multimedia-rich advertisements for later playback, you can earn points redeemable at e-merchants toward purchases.
This is exactly the scheme tried by all the "free ISP's" of a coupla years ago. "Watch my ads, and you get something in return."
Bottom line, basically no one could have prevented the attacks of 9/11. The air force had jets in the air minutes after it was known a hijacking was in progress. It was not an 'unusual' hijack until after the aircraft were flown into the WTC.
The hijackers brought nothing illegal onboard, so airport security had no reason to prohibit them from flying.
In an open society, there is no way to prevent random acts of violence like this.
As an exercise, predict the next terrorist attack, and prepare a defense for it.
Maybe the citizens are responsible - after all, we elected the Commander in Chief for the last several yeras.
For the last 226 years, actually. You have a better system?
Well, that hasn't gone to court yet. More probable is that the airlines will be held liable for lax securiy.
Never happen. UAL and AA would then go out of business from the potential billions in compensation they'd have to pay.
As has been said many, many times...the terrorists did nothing really unusual (in terms of hijacking) until they flew the planes into the buildings. Up until that moment, it was a semi-routine hijacking.
And up until that point, the standard hijack rules would apply. Cooperate until the aircraft gets on the ground. Then storm/shoot/beat about the head and shoulders any and all bad guys.
If the airlines are held liable, then so too are the airports involved, their security, Boeing, the FAA, NORAD, USAF, Microsoft (FS 2000), Germany, NOAA (was great weather that day), and probably you and I as well.
If a thing is truly wrong, sometimes you have to stand up to the idiots.
Some years ago, the company i work for sold off part of its operation, and moved the rest to a new state. Company B took over, and bought most of the equipment, the building, and hired most of the laid off people.
I had written a personnel database to manage the schedules of these 3-400 people. Company B wanted it.
Our management, in its infinite wisdom, thought this was a Good Thing. Make a little money for something we don't need anymore. So the CIO calls me and says "Send it to them."
"Ok..let me remove all the personal information, and I'll send them the bare program."
"Nope...they want the whole thing. Names, addresses, everything as it sits right now."
"WHAT? You can't do that! What about all the people who don't work for them now? Should their personal info be in the posession of some company they never heard of? Nope...I won't do it."
"Yes...send it to them today."
"I'll do it on one condition. A signed letter from the CEO, head of personnel, and a release letter from each and every person in the file."
Some of these people had not worked for us for years.
A flurry of emails ensued, with me in the lone dissenting position.
The personnel chief finally saw the light, and realized that you cannot be so cavalier with people's personal information.
I sent them the bare program the next day.
Just because a thing can be done, does not necessarily mean it should be done. If it is truly wrong (gator, Bonzi, Brilliant) then stand up to the PHB's. If they really force the issue....well, you have to do what is right for you.
Please..gimme a break. A PVR does not need an IM function. If I wanted to talk to someone, remotely, WHILE WATCHING TV, I'd do it on the phone. Not trying to divide my eyeball time between the show that was sooo important I just HAD to record/timeshift, and an AOL IM window.
So when the AOL/AIM client gets hacked (again), your TiVo is tits up. Nice.
Everything should not be merged with everything else.
For OSS to be really acccepted it needs a few different things for different user bases.
Business users:
Ease of use. it MUST display a consistent set of rules to perform various tasks, across applications. Cut/paste, save, open, close, change font, etc. Doubleclick here, singleclick there. All MUST be pretty much the same across your spreadsheet, graphics app, word processor.
Installation might not need be quite as easy, because the IT staff (or the office geek) will be doing the actual installations.
Help files. MUST be clear, complete, consistent, and above all useful. No geekisms.
Home users:
All of the above, PLUS a one click installation. No source code compilation, etc. Your 8 year old as well as your 80 year old grandmother need to be able to install, and then find and run it on the first try. If they can "find" it on the first try after installing, it is of no use.
GIMP. I love it. Not quite as powerful as Photoshop, but still quite good. Maddening, though in actual use. GIMP could take a page from PaintShopPro. 90% of the functionality, for 10% of the price. If GIMP were as easy to use as PSP, I'd buy it for $100. If free, even better. But if that $100 buys the dependable, concise PSP interface, well and good.
Same with an Office implementation. "free" is not so much of a draw as useful.
Give me one example of this happening. You can't, because it hasn't, because realistically, exposure is good, and if it ever came to the point where someone rips off your work like that you would already be fucking rich. Try looking at the real world.
That's right, it hasn't happened. Simply due to the huge cost and hassle of actually doing it. The PC has given everyone a printing press and a fleet of distribution trucks on their desk. And the mindset to think of 'filesharing' as simply making it available. It does not financially impact anyone they know, or know of only through TV. And all those guys are rich anyway, and don't need the money.
Think of yourself in this position. Do YOU work for free, simply giving away ALL your work?
Exposure is good, you can't live without it. But not when it can seriously remove your income stream. I'm not saying distribution over the net is a bad thing. The current model is seriously broken, and needs to be replaced.
If only the record companies would realize that fact, and embrace the new tech.
$1000 for the PC and hardware
$20 month for the 'Net connecction
$0.05/min for the phone call
Tech knowledge to set it up
Hassle of cranking up PC just to make a phone call (Call you right back, I gotta reboot my phone!)
all to replace $15, proven reliable hardware, and LD rates that can be had for $0.029/min from BigZoo.com.
A better one is:
If you are a writer, and spent the last year writing your masterpiece. And it's a damn good book. It finally gets into print, and you sell a few copies. Then, one of the readers gets it into his head (because he likes it so much) to distribute it to anyone who asks, free of charge. He buys a big ass printing press and a fleet of trucks. Starts cranking out perfect copies of your book, and delivering them, in person, to anyone who asks. You, the writer, get nothing from his efforts.
Pissed off? uh, YEAH! But you love writing so much, you write another book. And the same thing happens. Pretty soon, the realities of life start to intrude. Like eating. So you quit the book biz and get a job at McDonald's.
yep...that adrenline/endorphin buzz does it every time.
Riding in, then zigzagging thru the little cube farm to my office. Feel better mentally and physically.
Now..if it would only stop raining, I could get this damn application finished. I really hate riding in the rain.
This is Google's essential flaw. It does not recognize that a site like Amazon does not need an entry in a search engine. There are enough links out there already for just about anyone to find it. Google should instead group searches around a bell curve distribution, where the sites with the medium number of links have the highest relevance, with underlinked and overlinked sites falling off the ends.
Unfortunately, mindshare IS the key. You have to keep the product in front of people. Why do you think McDonalds still sends zillions on advertising? Everyone knows about them, there is one on every corner. Yet every week there is some new special, or new Happy Meal toy.
Because if they stopped advertising, they would quickly get rolled over by BK and Wendy's. 18 months, and they would be out of business.
For any company to survive, it needs to keep its name right out in front, everywhere possible.
It really does keep you up. I used it twice: Driving 20+ hours a day cross country to get to a new job, and on a marathon programmer project, staying awake 40 hours.
god...I'd hate to try to work my way through that code. Or be driving next to you.
Which would change nothing. Just as now, the commercial pr0n merchants do not (usually) display overtly explicit stuff on the opening page. You might have some girl in a exceedingly sexy pose, but semi clothed. And technically, legally(?), not pr0n. To get in, you have to go past the 'WARNING, NUDITY INSIDE' and credit card barrier. A 6" movement of the hand distinguishes between pr0n and a Sears catalog lingerie page.
the www.buymypanties.com is the opener, and the rest at *.prn? No real change. The would skirt the rules to the bleeding edge.
Is there an appeal process? If someone reports a picture of your bikini-clad girlfriend as pr0n", can you appeal? To whom? A user group from Greenwich Village and San Francisco? Or Frostbite Falls? Or worse yet, Riyadh and Singapore.
"I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." Who is doing the looking and defining?
Any attempt at defining/confining pr0n is so fraught with hazards as to be unworkable.
Yet quiet a lot of people walk around every day with a cylinder of compressed, flammable gas, right next to their balls. (said cylinder made of simple plastic, no less.)
You may move about on public streets without restriction. But the method you choose to move about may be restricted.
You can be a passenger, you can walk, you can ride a bicycle. To operate a motor vehicle, you must have a valid license. And such license can be suspended, revoked, or simply not issued for various reasons.
Your right to move about has not been restricted. Only the method.
Some quotes:
Oklahoma
"privilege of operation a motor vehicle on the public streets is "wholly separate from the right to travel"
Utah 1987 "The ability to drive a motor vehicle on a public roadway is not a fundamental right; it is a privilege that is granted upon the compliance with the statutory licensing procedures"
Minnesota 1988
"While there exists a fundamental right to travel, neither this court, nor our [state] supreme court, nor the US Supreme Court has ever held that there exists a fundamental right to drive a moter vehicle."
Missouri 1985
"The state of Missouri, by making the licensing requirements in question, is not prohibiting Davis from expressing or practicing his religious beliefs or from traveling throughout this land. If he wishes, he may walk, ride a bicycle or horse, or travel as a passenger in an automobile, bus, airplane or helicopter. He cannot, however, operate a moto vehicle on the public highways without... a valid operator's license."
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder how long it'll take until we see NVidia and ATI try to sell us this kind of thing...
It'll be Zeiss and Nikon. Optics, not graphics.
He got $422,000. Can you even Buy SoftImage for that price?
SoftImage 3D Xtreme 4.0 - $3999 per seat from B&H Photo
If you agree to let Altnet's partners download to your hard drive multimedia-rich advertisements for later playback, you can earn points redeemable at e-merchants toward purchases.
This is exactly the scheme tried by all the "free ISP's" of a coupla years ago. "Watch my ads, and you get something in return."
How many of those guys are still around?
Bottom line, basically no one could have prevented the attacks of 9/11. The air force had jets in the air minutes after it was known a hijacking was in progress. It was not an 'unusual' hijack until after the aircraft were flown into the WTC.
The hijackers brought nothing illegal onboard, so airport security had no reason to prohibit them from flying.
In an open society, there is no way to prevent random acts of violence like this.
As an exercise, predict the next terrorist attack, and prepare a defense for it.
Maybe the citizens are responsible - after all, we elected the Commander in Chief for the last several yeras.
For the last 226 years, actually. You have a better system?
Well, that hasn't gone to court yet. More probable is that the airlines will be held liable for lax securiy.
Never happen. UAL and AA would then go out of business from the potential billions in compensation they'd have to pay.
As has been said many, many times...the terrorists did nothing really unusual (in terms of hijacking) until they flew the planes into the buildings. Up until that moment, it was a semi-routine hijacking.
And up until that point, the standard hijack rules would apply. Cooperate until the aircraft gets on the ground. Then storm/shoot/beat about the head and shoulders any and all bad guys.
If the airlines are held liable, then so too are the airports involved, their security, Boeing, the FAA, NORAD, USAF, Microsoft (FS 2000), Germany, NOAA (was great weather that day), and probably you and I as well.
If a thing is truly wrong, sometimes you have to stand up to the idiots.
Some years ago, the company i work for sold off part of its operation, and moved the rest to a new state. Company B took over, and bought most of the equipment, the building, and hired most of the laid off people.
I had written a personnel database to manage the schedules of these 3-400 people. Company B wanted it.
Our management, in its infinite wisdom, thought this was a Good Thing. Make a little money for something we don't need anymore. So the CIO calls me and says "Send it to them."
"Ok..let me remove all the personal information, and I'll send them the bare program."
"Nope...they want the whole thing. Names, addresses, everything as it sits right now."
"WHAT? You can't do that! What about all the people who don't work for them now? Should their personal info be in the posession of some company they never heard of? Nope...I won't do it."
"Yes...send it to them today."
"I'll do it on one condition. A signed letter from the CEO, head of personnel, and a release letter from each and every person in the file."
Some of these people had not worked for us for years.
A flurry of emails ensued, with me in the lone dissenting position.
The personnel chief finally saw the light, and realized that you cannot be so cavalier with people's personal information.
I sent them the bare program the next day.
Just because a thing can be done, does not necessarily mean it should be done. If it is truly wrong (gator, Bonzi, Brilliant) then stand up to the PHB's. If they really force the issue....well, you have to do what is right for you.
Please..gimme a break. A PVR does not need an IM function. If I wanted to talk to someone, remotely, WHILE WATCHING TV, I'd do it on the phone. Not trying to divide my eyeball time between the show that was sooo important I just HAD to record/timeshift, and an AOL IM window.
So when the AOL/AIM client gets hacked (again), your TiVo is tits up. Nice.
Everything should not be merged with everything else.
Just wait till the military starts using these....
They already do. They're called Marines.
...but I can't help but wonder how long it will be until some kid starts asking his parents for a remote controlled rat for Cristmas.
And the fool parents give it to him.
Tickle Me Ratbert, no batteries needed.
For OSS to be really acccepted it needs a few different things for different user bases.
Business users:
Ease of use. it MUST display a consistent set of rules to perform various tasks, across applications. Cut/paste, save, open, close, change font, etc. Doubleclick here, singleclick there. All MUST be pretty much the same across your spreadsheet, graphics app, word processor.
Installation might not need be quite as easy, because the IT staff (or the office geek) will be doing the actual installations.
Help files. MUST be clear, complete, consistent, and above all useful. No geekisms.
Home users:
All of the above, PLUS a one click installation. No source code compilation, etc. Your 8 year old as well as your 80 year old grandmother need to be able to install, and then find and run it on the first try. If they can "find" it on the first try after installing, it is of no use.
GIMP. I love it. Not quite as powerful as Photoshop, but still quite good. Maddening, though in actual use. GIMP could take a page from PaintShopPro. 90% of the functionality, for 10% of the price. If GIMP were as easy to use as PSP, I'd buy it for $100. If free, even better. But if that $100 buys the dependable, concise PSP interface, well and good.
Same with an Office implementation. "free" is not so much of a draw as useful.
Were the mountain bikes illegally on the street, or were the old ladies on a mountain bike trail, or in the street itself?
Bikes are almost never illegal on the street. They are almost always illegal on the sidewalk.
Give me one example of this happening. You can't, because it hasn't, because realistically, exposure is good, and if it ever came to the point where someone rips off your work like that you would already be fucking rich. Try looking at the real world.
That's right, it hasn't happened. Simply due to the huge cost and hassle of actually doing it. The PC has given everyone a printing press and a fleet of distribution trucks on their desk. And the mindset to think of 'filesharing' as simply making it available. It does not financially impact anyone they know, or know of only through TV. And all those guys are rich anyway, and don't need the money.
Think of yourself in this position. Do YOU work for free, simply giving away ALL your work?
Exposure is good, you can't live without it. But not when it can seriously remove your income stream. I'm not saying distribution over the net is a bad thing. The current model is seriously broken, and needs to be replaced.
If only the record companies would realize that fact, and embrace the new tech.
Let's see...
$1000 for the PC and hardware
$20 month for the 'Net connecction
$0.05/min for the phone call
Tech knowledge to set it up
Hassle of cranking up PC just to make a phone call (Call you right back, I gotta reboot my phone!)
all to replace $15, proven reliable hardware, and LD rates that can be had for $0.029/min from BigZoo.com.
Finally, someone with a bit of a brain in the transport area.
Building new roads to combat congestion is like buying a bigger belt to combat obesity.
Yes, the 'A' paper analogy is flawed.
A better one is:
If you are a writer, and spent the last year writing your masterpiece. And it's a damn good book. It finally gets into print, and you sell a few copies. Then, one of the readers gets it into his head (because he likes it so much) to distribute it to anyone who asks, free of charge. He buys a big ass printing press and a fleet of trucks. Starts cranking out perfect copies of your book, and delivering them, in person, to anyone who asks. You, the writer, get nothing from his efforts.
Pissed off? uh, YEAH! But you love writing so much, you write another book. And the same thing happens. Pretty soon, the realities of life start to intrude. Like eating. So you quit the book biz and get a job at McDonald's.
yep...that adrenline/endorphin buzz does it every time. Riding in, then zigzagging thru the little cube farm to my office. Feel better mentally and physically.
Now..if it would only stop raining, I could get this damn application finished. I really hate riding in the rain.
and yes, I am way older than most of you guys..:)
... Linux, features commands which are poorly disguised racist acronyms. For example: 'awk' (All White Klan) , 'sed' (shoot nEgroes dead), 'ln' (lynch negroes), 'rpm' (raical purity mandatory), 'bash' (bring a slave home), 'ps' (persecute sambo), 'mount' (murder or unseat nubians today), 'fsck' (favored supreme Christian klan).
Anonymous Coward
All Nutcases Or Not, You Must Orate Unbelievable Silliness, Conversely Obfuscating With Asinine, Ridiculous Diatribe
This is Google's essential flaw. It does not recognize that a site like Amazon does not need an entry in a search engine. There are enough links out there already for just about anyone to find it. Google should instead group searches around a bell curve distribution, where the sites with the medium number of links have the highest relevance, with underlinked and overlinked sites falling off the ends.
Unfortunately, mindshare IS the key. You have to keep the product in front of people. Why do you think McDonalds still sends zillions on advertising? Everyone knows about them, there is one on every corner. Yet every week there is some new special, or new Happy Meal toy.
Because if they stopped advertising, they would quickly get rolled over by BK and Wendy's. 18 months, and they would be out of business.
For any company to survive, it needs to keep its name right out in front, everywhere possible.
...if you have the IQ of Edison or da Vinci, go for it.
For the rest of us mortals, it might not be a good idea
It really does keep you up. I used it twice: Driving 20+ hours a day cross country to get to a new job, and on a marathon programmer project, staying awake 40 hours.
god...I'd hate to try to work my way through that code. Or be driving next to you.
Which would change nothing. Just as now, the commercial pr0n merchants do not (usually) display overtly explicit stuff on the opening page. You might have some girl in a exceedingly sexy pose, but semi clothed. And technically, legally(?), not pr0n. To get in, you have to go past the 'WARNING, NUDITY INSIDE' and credit card barrier. A 6" movement of the hand distinguishes between pr0n and a Sears catalog lingerie page.
the www.buymypanties.com is the opener, and the rest at *.prn? No real change. The would skirt the rules to the bleeding edge.
Is there an appeal process? If someone reports a picture of your bikini-clad girlfriend as pr0n", can you appeal? To whom? A user group from Greenwich Village and San Francisco? Or Frostbite Falls? Or worse yet, Riyadh and Singapore.
"I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." Who is doing the looking and defining?
Any attempt at defining/confining pr0n is so fraught with hazards as to be unworkable.
It's fairly easy to say what goes into the .prn domain, as it's already defined for the airways and video/movie markets.
.prn domain? Some would say yes. "OMG, it's got titties!"
No, it's not easy. Would a photo of the Venus de Milo go in the
Obvious stuff is easy. The grey line is the hard part.
Yet quiet a lot of people walk around every day with a cylinder of compressed, flammable gas, right next to their balls. (said cylinder made of simple plastic, no less.)
Unfortunately, unlike Sim*, when things go bad you can't start a new game.
You may move about on public streets without restriction. But the method you choose to move about may be restricted.
... a valid operator's license."
You can be a passenger, you can walk, you can ride a bicycle. To operate a motor vehicle, you must have a valid license. And such license can be suspended, revoked, or simply not issued for various reasons.
Your right to move about has not been restricted. Only the method.
Various judges and coutrts agree. Idiot Legal Arguments
Some quotes:
Oklahoma
"privilege of operation a motor vehicle on the public streets is "wholly separate from the right to travel"
Utah 1987
"The ability to drive a motor vehicle on a public roadway is not a fundamental right; it is a privilege that is granted upon the compliance with the statutory licensing procedures"
Minnesota 1988
"While there exists a fundamental right to travel, neither this court, nor our [state] supreme court, nor the US Supreme Court has ever held that there exists a fundamental right to drive a moter vehicle."
Missouri 1985
"The state of Missouri, by making the licensing requirements in question, is not prohibiting Davis from expressing or practicing his religious beliefs or from traveling throughout this land. If he wishes, he may walk, ride a bicycle or horse, or travel as a passenger in an automobile, bus, airplane or helicopter. He cannot, however, operate a moto vehicle on the public highways without