If you're a sales rep with decent leeway, you just give out a gmail address to your contacts instead of your corporate address. What IT don't know can't hurt you:)
I heard about it a while ago. I buy tons of ps2 games off ebay, so I get bombarded with their ads every other time I log in. Frankly, I was just confused. It just seemed to needlessly duplicate the Buy-it-Now feature and/or reserve. Near as I can tell, it was purely a marketing thing, meant to position ebay to compete with Amazon and what not.
My brother's having a really hard time getting my niece to eat healthy. He screwed up when she was really young, and let her drink lots of HFCS filled beverages and eat lots of processed and fast food. The trouble is, stuff like HFCS and meats seasoned with MSG and other chemicals have much stronger flavors than normal food, so now nothing tastes 'right' to her except that junk. Even well prepared food made by a good cook tastes 'off' to her if it's not loaded with that crap. Funny thing about kids, what they eat in their first few years is what they'll want to eat for their whole lives
And as for me? I've just dropped 70lbs through a ton of diet and exercise, and as silly as it sounds, I went through what can only be described as withdrawal symptoms when I gave up fast food. Mild symptoms, but noticeable all the same. When I'd get stressed, I'd really want to hit a fast food joint. Not just any 'ole restaurant either, but specifically a fast food joint. Took about a month to get over the cravings, and nowadays I can hardly stand the stuff, but it was tough going the first month or so.
You've got to remember, this 'food' is chemically engineered to taste good, and to make you want more. e.g. That old slogan "No one can eat just one" isn't just advertising. Those chips are designed by a chemist to make you want another, and another, and another... Read Fredrick Pohl's "The Space Merchants" if you haven't already. Everything he describes in the book is already done on a slightly less overt and evil scale, but it's all there. Real science fiction, and this is comming from a guy with a background in marketing.
console launches are expensive and messy affairs. Sony had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 128-bit era by Sega and their Dreamcast before they pushed out the ps2, and by Microsoft's XBox360 this Generation. After all, software's where the money is.
is Playstation 2 Memory cards. 8 Mb of flash ram for $25 bucks. Why? Because of what Sony affectionately terms "Magic Gate", a really basic system of controls for what can and cannot be copied from a memory card. Thanks to this stuff triggering the DMCA, we get no 3rd party Memory cards (except the Nyco ones, that are also $25 dollars). This kind of stuff is what the DMCA is all about. It's about giving companies absolute legal control over their products. Hell, Lexmark tried to use it to keep 3rd party printer cartridges off the market, and I'm still convinced the only reason they didn't succeed is the judge didn't want to have to pay more than he already was for the damn things.
how are ISP's going to take to users maxing out their upload bandwidth 24/7 running commercial p2p clients? Somebody's got to pay for the infrastructure. I can't imagine the current networks aren't optimized for web browsing and light uploading in short bursts (i.e. pictures, word docs and the occasional wmv).
Many thanks to EvilBible.com for this one. There are many other examples of death for non-believers and those that didn't follow the church's teachings and laws.
Because we all know there are so many people out there who are just pacing the floor at nights trying to figure out a way to make a word-processor with fewer letters.
I use the Elbonian font software. It works great, unless you need consonants for some reason.
that the creators are smart enough to realize that there is no patent on online classifieds (and classifieds are simple enough that even the most braindead patent reviewer wouldn't ok one, and even if he did every newspaper in the world would fight to shut it down), and also there's a really small barrier to entry for online classifieds (just do text only and let people host their own images). So if craigslist does go down the path of the darkside, it'd take approx. nothing to get a free competitor up and running....
Oil Subsidies. Free Roads. Defense Contracts. Other Contracts. Gov't funded education for your workforce. Government Guaranteed loans. Bail outs. Cheap Trust lands and easy tax dodges. The rich are definitely getting their money's worth. Gore Vidal put it brilliantly: Capitalism for the poor, socialism for the Rich.
it was a Neo-Geo add which ran in Video Games & Computer Entertainment back in the 90's. There was a picture of a yuppie type and a hot chick in lingerie and a caption along the lines of "He used to spend all night playing with me."
in our modern society, a good 20% to 30% of the population can cling to some sort of decent life (the middle class), even while the top 1% to 5% have their every wish fulfilled. Back in George's day, things pretty much sucked for everyone but that 1% to 5%. With a sizable population not worried about food and shelter from day to day are you going to be able to get that comfortable 20% to 30% (along with probably another 20% to 30% just scraping by) to risk what little they've got for the sake of freedom?
You'll counter that they're already risking everything, and they'll need their freedom to keep it. But they don't know that, and they are openly hostile to that suggestion. And besides, you still haven't convinced me that that 40% to 60% whose lives aren't a constant day to day struggle are willing to put anything on the line.
who patented using the internet for online auctions. This isn't just obvious, it's using the a tool (The Internet), for it's intended purpose (near real-time communication). It's like patenting using a hammer to pound nails. Amazon's one-click is the same. I mean, who'd of though using cookies to track user state? Genius!
Many, if not most drugs are created based on studies and research done by the Government. The Government does the really expensive work, and release the research for free. Then drug companies take that and polish it up into a drug. Most of the cutting edge stuff gets done at Universities on the public's dime, because drug companies won't fund something that isn't going to be profitable in more than 7 years.
The incentive is to keep people from doing something about it. If peak oil is going to hit in the next 5 or 10 years, or if you can even convince a large number of people that it is, then oil consumption would drop dramatically as we begin to conserve. That means less profits in the short run. Plus, if oil companies hasten the path the peak oil, that means a quicker route to the ungodly profits that they'll see when it happens.
the ps3 is _not_ over priced. Just because you (and I:( ) don't have the scratch (or aren't willing to fork it over if you do), doesn't mean it's overpriced. The pre orders sold out, instantly. By definition it's not over priced. The only way it will become over priced is if Sony fails to drop the prices as sales slow and costs come down. Then it will be overpriced. Until then, if anything it's severely under priced. It's going for well over $600 dollars on ebay and all indications are that the bids aren't jokes.
once you get people used to paying at a certain price point, it's hard to raise it w/o adding significant new value. Take.99 cent hamburgers. Prices rose to the point were they weren't profitable, even if you got people to buy frys and soda with them. But it took years for the larger burgers to come off the 99cent menu, and every major Fast Food joint is still obligated to have a value menu to compete..99cents/track is overcharging now. It probably won't be 10 years from now. Certainly not 20 or 30 years from now.
Their argument is likely to be that she _can_ be held responsible for people who downloaded the song from her computer, because then she's distributing it herself. What's interesting about this is, if she proves that song downloads are only worth.70 cents, the RIAA will have to prove that 1000 people downloaded the song from here to get their $700/song, and they'll have to do that for each song. OTOH, this is all kind of moot, since copyright infringement is now a crimnal offense, they can still do plenty of other terrible things to her besides ruining her financially. So even if this works out we're not out of the woods yet, and aren't likely to ever be.
These days, retailiers oversell the pre-orders, and then give the console to those that bought the most accessories. And they may not be die hard fans, but savvy ebayers. You might just make $1000 dollars profit for a week in line if you score a ps3 in an area where there aren't many of them.
and it's bunk. Wild Arms 3 pulled off turn based gaming with a strong strategic element. And let's not forget Valkyrie Profile. Then there's Breath of Fire V, who's action point system and insanely tough battles force you to consider each move pretty carefully. The entire Dragon Quest series does a pretty good job of being gameplay driven and rewarding smart playing, but you can (and most do) grind it to death. Hell, the GBA Golden Sun games require extremely careful use of summons to beat bosses. Calling out a summon unbound it from you for a few turns, which lowered your stats. But you'd run out of healing gear before winning if you didn't use summons.
Too many people act like FFXII's combat is some kind of natural progression. That's only true so long as Square abandon's Gameplay Driven RPGs. I'd love to see them go back to Gameplay. FFIX promised that, but all it delivered were retro character designs. By the same token, I don't want a game that's just pointlessly and brutally hard . What I like about RPGs is the freedom you get from taking the game at your own pace. You can grind to make it easy or plow through to make it challenging. Too easy and there's never any reason to delve into the Gameplay (read: Legend of Mana). Too hard, and I just give up (*cough*Saga Frontier*cough*).
Slashdot Mirror
our new, legally empowered and healthy robot overlords.
If you're a sales rep with decent leeway, you just give out a gmail address to your contacts instead of your corporate address. What IT don't know can't hurt you :)
I heard about it a while ago. I buy tons of ps2 games off ebay, so I get bombarded with their ads every other time I log in. Frankly, I was just confused. It just seemed to needlessly duplicate the Buy-it-Now feature and/or reserve. Near as I can tell, it was purely a marketing thing, meant to position ebay to compete with Amazon and what not.
My brother's having a really hard time getting my niece to eat healthy. He screwed up when she was really young, and let her drink lots of HFCS filled beverages and eat lots of processed and fast food. The trouble is, stuff like HFCS and meats seasoned with MSG and other chemicals have much stronger flavors than normal food, so now nothing tastes 'right' to her except that junk. Even well prepared food made by a good cook tastes 'off' to her if it's not loaded with that crap. Funny thing about kids, what they eat in their first few years is what they'll want to eat for their whole lives
And as for me? I've just dropped 70lbs through a ton of diet and exercise, and as silly as it sounds, I went through what can only be described as withdrawal symptoms when I gave up fast food. Mild symptoms, but noticeable all the same. When I'd get stressed, I'd really want to hit a fast food joint. Not just any 'ole restaurant either, but specifically a fast food joint. Took about a month to get over the cravings, and nowadays I can hardly stand the stuff, but it was tough going the first month or so.
You've got to remember, this 'food' is chemically engineered to taste good, and to make you want more. e.g. That old slogan "No one can eat just one" isn't just advertising. Those chips are designed by a chemist to make you want another, and another, and another... Read Fredrick Pohl's "The Space Merchants" if you haven't already. Everything he describes in the book is already done on a slightly less overt and evil scale, but it's all there. Real science fiction, and this is comming from a guy with a background in marketing.
console launches are expensive and messy affairs. Sony had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 128-bit era by Sega and their Dreamcast before they pushed out the ps2, and by Microsoft's XBox360 this Generation. After all, software's where the money is.
is Playstation 2 Memory cards. 8 Mb of flash ram for $25 bucks. Why? Because of what Sony affectionately terms "Magic Gate", a really basic system of controls for what can and cannot be copied from a memory card. Thanks to this stuff triggering the DMCA, we get no 3rd party Memory cards (except the Nyco ones, that are also $25 dollars). This kind of stuff is what the DMCA is all about. It's about giving companies absolute legal control over their products. Hell, Lexmark tried to use it to keep 3rd party printer cartridges off the market, and I'm still convinced the only reason they didn't succeed is the judge didn't want to have to pay more than he already was for the damn things.
how are ISP's going to take to users maxing out their upload bandwidth 24/7 running commercial p2p clients? Somebody's got to pay for the infrastructure. I can't imagine the current networks aren't optimized for web browsing and light uploading in short bursts (i.e. pictures, word docs and the occasional wmv).
that the creators are smart enough to realize that there is no patent on online classifieds (and classifieds are simple enough that even the most braindead patent reviewer wouldn't ok one, and even if he did every newspaper in the world would fight to shut it down), and also there's a really small barrier to entry for online classifieds (just do text only and let people host their own images). So if craigslist does go down the path of the darkside, it'd take approx. nothing to get a free competitor up and running....
:)
But I'm feeling really cynical today
Oil Subsidies. Free Roads. Defense Contracts. Other Contracts. Gov't funded education for your workforce. Government Guaranteed loans. Bail outs. Cheap Trust lands and easy tax dodges. The rich are definitely getting their money's worth. Gore Vidal put it brilliantly: Capitalism for the poor, socialism for the Rich.
it's just a pity that He had to take out all those PS3 owners just to get the Wii gamers. *ducks*.
Oh well, it'll only take 65 million years for Sony to get another 100,000 consoles out. **ducks again**
that's it. I'm amazed anyone but me remembered it. :).
it was a Neo-Geo add which ran in Video Games & Computer Entertainment back in the 90's. There was a picture of a yuppie type and a hot chick in lingerie and a caption along the lines of "He used to spend all night playing with me."
in our modern society, a good 20% to 30% of the population can cling to some sort of decent life (the middle class), even while the top 1% to 5% have their every wish fulfilled. Back in George's day, things pretty much sucked for everyone but that 1% to 5%. With a sizable population not worried about food and shelter from day to day are you going to be able to get that comfortable 20% to 30% (along with probably another 20% to 30% just scraping by) to risk what little they've got for the sake of freedom?
You'll counter that they're already risking everything, and they'll need their freedom to keep it. But they don't know that, and they are openly hostile to that suggestion. And besides, you still haven't convinced me that that 40% to 60% whose lives aren't a constant day to day struggle are willing to put anything on the line.
who patented using the internet for online auctions. This isn't just obvious, it's using the a tool (The Internet), for it's intended purpose (near real-time communication). It's like patenting using a hammer to pound nails. Amazon's one-click is the same. I mean, who'd of though using cookies to track user state? Genius!
Many, if not most drugs are created based on studies and research done by the Government. The Government does the really expensive work, and release the research for free. Then drug companies take that and polish it up into a drug. Most of the cutting edge stuff gets done at Universities on the public's dime, because drug companies won't fund something that isn't going to be profitable in more than 7 years.
it's not going to last 22 years, let alone 122.
The incentive is to keep people from doing something about it. If peak oil is going to hit in the next 5 or 10 years, or if you can even convince a large number of people that it is, then oil consumption would drop dramatically as we begin to conserve. That means less profits in the short run. Plus, if oil companies hasten the path the peak oil, that means a quicker route to the ungodly profits that they'll see when it happens.
the ps3 is _not_ over priced. Just because you (and I :( ) don't have the scratch (or aren't willing to fork it over if you do), doesn't mean it's overpriced. The pre orders sold out, instantly. By definition it's not over priced. The only way it will become over priced is if Sony fails to drop the prices as sales slow and costs come down. Then it will be overpriced. Until then, if anything it's severely under priced. It's going for well over $600 dollars on ebay and all indications are that the bids aren't jokes.
once you get people used to paying at a certain price point, it's hard to raise it w/o adding significant new value. Take .99 cent hamburgers. Prices rose to the point were they weren't profitable, even if you got people to buy frys and soda with them. But it took years for the larger burgers to come off the 99cent menu, and every major Fast Food joint is still obligated to have a value menu to compete. .99cents/track is overcharging now. It probably won't be 10 years from now. Certainly not 20 or 30 years from now.
Their argument is likely to be that she _can_ be held responsible for people who downloaded the song from her computer, because then she's distributing it herself. What's interesting about this is, if she proves that song downloads are only worth .70 cents, the RIAA will have to prove that 1000 people downloaded the song from here to get their $700/song, and they'll have to do that for each song. OTOH, this is all kind of moot, since copyright infringement is now a crimnal offense, they can still do plenty of other terrible things to her besides ruining her financially. So even if this works out we're not out of the woods yet, and aren't likely to ever be.
These days, retailiers oversell the pre-orders, and then give the console to those that bought the most accessories. And they may not be die hard fans, but savvy ebayers. You might just make $1000 dollars profit for a week in line if you score a ps3 in an area where there aren't many of them.
and it's bunk. Wild Arms 3 pulled off turn based gaming with a strong strategic element. And let's not forget Valkyrie Profile. Then there's Breath of Fire V, who's action point system and insanely tough battles force you to consider each move pretty carefully. The entire Dragon Quest series does a pretty good job of being gameplay driven and rewarding smart playing, but you can (and most do) grind it to death. Hell, the GBA Golden Sun games require extremely careful use of summons to beat bosses. Calling out a summon unbound it from you for a few turns, which lowered your stats. But you'd run out of healing gear before winning if you didn't use summons.
Too many people act like FFXII's combat is some kind of natural progression. That's only true so long as Square abandon's Gameplay Driven RPGs. I'd love to see them go back to Gameplay. FFIX promised that, but all it delivered were retro character designs. By the same token, I don't want a game that's just pointlessly and brutally hard . What I like about RPGs is the freedom you get from taking the game at your own pace. You can grind to make it easy or plow through to make it challenging. Too easy and there's never any reason to delve into the Gameplay (read: Legend of Mana). Too hard, and I just give up (*cough*Saga Frontier*cough*).
Microsoft doesn't know that yet! We're trying to keep them in the dark. Sheesh, get with the program.