My firm needed a file server, but the guys are cheap, cheap, cheap. I bought an IBM Netfinity server with a SCSI array, installed Red Hat 7.2, set up SAMBA and squid, and we haven't looked back. I back it up every now and then (usually weekly) with a USB hard drive that is stored off site.
I've been using OOO on my computer without telling abyone about it, and nobody has noticed. Our documents aren't grossly complex -- they usually consist of no more than twenty pages, and most are just numbered paragraphs or letters. Very basic formatting.
Our linux box has been running nearly two months with no intervention (it runs an absolute minimum of services in order to reduce complexity and the need for patching). The only reason we had downtime since it was installed was from power outages, and we've fixed that with a smart UPS. Each month it runs, I take a sip of scotch from the bottle that every lawyer has in his desk drawer. I think "happy birthday" and thank god that I don't have to screw with an NT (or win2k or whatever) box.
Seriously, the idea is the same. Computing is more and more commoditized, so where the cycles come from doesn't matter -- what matters is your data. Why then should the computing process be locked in by hardware or operating software? Applications still matter, since they are the means by which data is manipulated, but these can probably be squeezed into CF card or onto a secure network that you can reach with your CF card settings and ID and fat bandwidth. I think McNealy is on to something (I think I remember reading that piece you referenced), but he's been wrong (or early) so many times that I start to view his backing as an evil omen for any technology initiative.
I guess that XML and encryption are really the answers here, more than anything. Everything else is just details.
Ok, ok, there are problems with this, but as storage becomes smaller and smaller, why not simply have a media card to contain all of this? I think that I have seen GB sized portable storage stuff (CompactFlash, USB keychain-type devices, etc.). These exceed CD storage. DVD would be an option as well, obviously.
As prices drop and hardware detection improves, there would be many specialized applications where storing the app and the OS on a completely removable disk would be possible. I've seen people mention MAME as a possibility (if you do it on CF, you could distribute the package and allow the addition of ROMs to avoid liability). A portable/home with your OS and apps of choice would work as well.
Companies could possibly use something like this under certain circumstances (consulting firms that already "hotel" employees) to avoid having people lug around laptops -- give 'em a PDA with a CF card and set them loose. The home "hotel" could have plain old dummy terminals that would just require the user to plug in the CF card to start rolling. When logged into a "hotel" workstation, perhaps there would be a backup of new data on the card to a manly file system to deal with the inevitable "I lost my card" problems that will arise with tiny storage media.
Security is an issue, but it's nothing that encryption couldn't solve or at least address in most circumstances.
The "America's Army" application is just a slice of what could be done with this idea. I see a lot of people rejecting the idea of a specific disk for loading and running a single app and requiring a reboot for every app, but this does not need to be the case. The limitation of the America's Army thing (if used in an expanded manner) could be overcome with rewritable (not necessarily CD or DVD) media. Don't look at what the "America's Army" disc is -- look at how the idea could be extended and applied. Knoppix and things along those lines are just a start.
Targeted at the world wide traveller, it also looks like a good way to help prevent identity theft and getting nasty white powder in the mail."
Ok. Which item below is lesser or smaller than the risk of getting "nasty white powder in the mail":
a) A kernel hacker's desire for personal cleamliness b) Microsoft's concern for your security c) Natalie Portman's petrified grits d) Having a piano drop on your head as you walk down the sidewalk e) None
Answer: E.
This kind of FUD (essentially: prevent the risk of getting anthrax in the mail!) should be reserved for AV companies.
Please.
Maybe the service would be convenient. Maybe it would be uber geeky, but I submit that it reduces your risk of contracting anthrax through the mail from effectively zero to zero. Run a little risk-reward on that. I think that your money would be better spent on a tin foil hat (tm), as that would be a more effective way to reduce your risks from a variety of sources, such as mind control waves from outer space.
Are you fiscally conservative? Dean is WAY more conservative and responsible about spending than Bush is. Bush is an embarrassment to the right on that subject- he's spending way more than Clinton, he's out of control.
(1) Clinton did not have Bin Laden to deal with. Afghanistan accounts for a significant portion of the 87 billion recently requisitioned. The swamp in Afghanistan had to be drained. What has been done there is not by any means permanent, but it has taken away a prominent safe house for Al Quaida.
(2) Iraq blah blah blah Iraq.
(3) Fiscal stimulus was necessary to pull us out of the recession we were entering in the tail end of 2000. Tax cuts and increased spending, combined with monetary policy changes (cuts in interest rates) were needed. Bush, and the GOP Congress, delivered. The key is to roll back or slow down spending growth as the economy rebounds. The deficit (as a percentage of GDP) is not particularly high. It is lower than many of the Reagan-era deficits. Deficits are not, per se, a bad thing. Remember that about $150 billion per year of the debt is monetized, so the current year deficit is actually lower by about that much. The $500 billion deficit is really only $350 (excluding the underfunded pension obligations). As a percentage of GDP, that is very small. As the economy picks up, tax revenues should rise again as well.
(4) Not having a budget surplus prevents the creation of new spending programs. I love to see the Denocrats in the position of having to argue for massive tax increases to pay for national health insurance. That's a fair debate. Saying instead that they just want to take the surplus and spit it back in income redistribution via health insurance is a quite different argument, and an easier one to make. The GOP prevented them from using the latter argument.
(5) The deficit is a useful tool politically (in addition to the way mentioned above) as it makes the gub'ment seem profligate and wasteful. This lowers the perception of the average person about the gub'ment and makes him less willing to want the gub'ment to do anything for him.
This may all seem somewhat paranoid to you, but running deficits right now is the right thing to do to get the economy going and it is the right thing to do to keep permanent new spending programs from taking place (and no, tax cuts do not count as a spending program).
we can afford free health insurance for all children- thing called Dr. Dynasaur. We got the money for it, thanks to Dean.
In other news, the Bush administration has decided to counter the Howard Dean campaign's effort to create a network of weblogs ("blogs") by giving Republican supporters access to the surplus WMD which were recently discovered at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland.
"We hope that our supporters use the smallpox virus in a way that will support our common goals" stated White House insider Karl Rove. "We think that the time has come to deal with the infidel huns who are attempting to thwart our ultimate goal of establishing a reactionary, protestant theocracy with President Bush as Ayatollah. Using smallpox in areas where there are concentrations of liberal and Democratic voters will surely help us to win an outright majority in the next election. Jew York, here comes Itchy and Scratchy!" Rove went on to describe the plan to trade smallpox-infected blankets to residents of New York City in exchange for wampum.
Democrats in Congress criticized the move, calling it cynical at best and mass murder at worst. In the Senate today, Ted Kennedy (D-MA) spoke to the issue, calling the use of biological weapons by Republican campaigners, "worse than anything than Daddy ever did, and that's saying a lot." Senator Kennedy was later found garroted in his chambers in what appears to be the work of a lone assassin. See our related story for information on the investigation, including the appointment of Chief Justice Rehnquist to a commission to investigate the assassination of Senator Kennedy.
Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) chastized the President for the move as well, calling it "barbaric". Senator Clinton was last seen ushering her husband, former President Bill Clinton, into a limosine bound for his office in Harlem. "Bill needs to be in the right place to do the most good during this crisis." Commentators noted that Senator Clinton did not seem alarmed that her husband was going into one of the hardest-hit areas. Staffer John McClintock was quoted as saying that [Senator Clinton] seemed to be "strangely peaceful" as former President Clinton left for Harlem and that "she danced a jig similar to the one Hitler did when his troops defeated the French."
Thanks for the tip. Very, very cool. I do agree (with another poster) that there should be examples that are only HTML elements (no bitmaps). Otherwise, this is excellent, and it has got me thinking about some projects already.
This is exactly the reason I want the ability to choose which channels to get. Sure, I assume it's almost free to the cable company to carry QVC, but it's not like I care about it.
I was responding to the guy that wanted ESPN and CNN and pretty much nothing else.
I think that a la carte is a nice idea, but it creates too many billing headaches for providers. Packages are the way to go, and if "basic" is too desirable, not many people would go for the premium craptacular package. Likewise, if you really want something, then you might be willing to pay a bunch to get it. The value of a channel to a cable subscriber is not the issue -- the issue is what the hard-core "I want it" guys will pay.
Cable and satellite have so many channels now that everything is divided by interest group. That is why most viewers think that there is so much shit on (well...aside from their natural critical thinking skills) -- interest programming is so fragmented that subgroups really want one channel but don't care about most other channels. They will pay premium prices to get what they want.
Someone might come along with an a la carte option (over the internet seems like a natural for this) but the big cable players would probably pressure the content providers not to deal with such an outfit. This would likely have major anti-trust implications.
One final point -- your system pays nothing to QVC -- they get paid by QVC. Shopping channels are different.
FWIW, I am a Directv subscriber (no, I haven't been sued -- I am an actual paying subscriber). I would gladly ditch it if (1) I could get Steelers games in my area and (2)....I forget what other reason there is besides Steelers games. I am becoming more and more an advocate of pay-per-view for everything. I'd love to see a per hour charge option for cable/satellite TV, maybe something like 25 cents per hour, even with ads. I'd save tons.
How difficult is it to simply give me the products I want to pay for? Give me 1) Broadband internet access 2) the History channel 3) the Learning channel 4) Discovery 5) CNN's 6)CSPAN 7)FoodTV 8) Speedvision 9) ESPN and perhaps a few others. The rest is just noise that I don't want to pay for and never watch.
So, at most 15 channels plus broadband should run what $25-30? They can have the other 70 channels.
Something that you may not be aware of is that many channels are part of package deals with cable companies. If you want CNN, you have to carry TBS. If you want ESPN, you have to carry ESPN2, ABC's family channel thingy, etc.
Also, the prices charged for individual channels, such as ESPN, are quite high per cable subscriber. You aren't just paying for access to cable -- you are paying for the content as well even if you are just getting basic (since this usually is more than just local channels and shopping channels). Other than the local channels (which must be carried) and the shopping channels (which pay your cable company to be on their system), each channel has a cost to the system that carries it. Not surprisingly, ESPN and CNN are among the most-expensive cable channels because everyone wants them. Throw in the package deals and the cost of the cable plant, and the "basic" cable cost soon gets fairly high.
Your cable bill can be viewed as several separate and discrete components: cost recovery for the cable plant, overhead (ads, customer services, truck rolls, etc.), profit margin, content costs, and premium content costs (which are recovered by higher charges for premium packages). Municipalities also get money from the deals that they cut from the cable companies to provide service in your area (franchise feess/taxes).
If you want internet access or better basic cable options, a good idea is to mobilize people significantly in advance of the time that a franchise agreement for your municipality is about to expire. Let your local elected officials know what you think is important and organize a group of people so it's not just one person nagging. More often than you might suspect, the local board in charge of such things will consider your input.
The local chamber of commerce is a good place to start rallying the troops as well -- many local chambers are in favor of the idea of expanding broadband access, as it helps businesses as well as consumers. They might be willing to agitate with you or at least at the same time as you. If a local board sees people coming out of the woodwork on an issue, they are less likely to rubber stamp whatever is dumped into their laps by the cable company.
Someone with a better knowledge of the cable industry can fill in the details on component costs better than I can, but this is my general understanding of how things work with cable price policies.
See, he was making fun of the name GIMP because it is the type of thing a grandmother would for instance find inappropriate.
Not to be a dumbass, but why is "The Gimp" inappropriate? Merriam Webster doesn't tell me anything. The only time I've ever seen "gimp" anywhere in popular culture was in Pulp Fiction, and I don't think that the use there was anything like common or ordinary. A gimp is someone who walks with a limp.
Look around and you may be able to find an older version of zMud for free. Granted, it'll be on the order of 5-6 years old, but I bet you can dig one up.
That's when my good pals Hancock, Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson, along with a few other buds, got together and came up with this whole fair trial system.
Actually, in everywhere but Louisiana, the legal systems were derived from the English common law system. Your "good pals" had nothing to do with the development of the courts in the US. Washington and Franklin did sign the Constitution, but Hancock wasn't there. Neither was Jefferson (he was in Paris bonking French chicks).
The Constitution did establish a federal court system and allowed Congress to establish the jurisdiction of the courts, but the state courts were left largely unaffected. Also, traditional notions of fair play and justice were not established by the Constitution -- rules of procedure and common law rules were adopted wholesale from existing state courts. In fact, federal courts hearing cases in the several states ultimately decided to follow state court rulings on substantive legal issues, or, in a case of first impression, they are to try to anticipate how a state's highest court would rule on an issue.
Thats when, well everybody in congress, who's names are too many to mention, (and not worth mentioning considering what they did) overturned two centuries worth of a tried and true system.
The common law is far older than two centuries. The courts have not overturned it, either. Neither has the Congress. You may not like the way that the courts are used, but tough titty -- your criticisms do not comprise a fair critique of the federal judiciary or the legal system in general.
On a final note, I am unaware of any Constitutional provision that protects people from obtaining properly copyrighted materials free of charge from more or less anonymous suppliers over the internet against the wishes of the rights holder. You may not like the law, but your remedy is at the ballot box, not in the courtroom.
I fully anticipate the hue and cry to the effect of "Ballot box? You're so naive!". On the other hand, that is the remedy for bad law. Additionally, you seem to have a problem with lawsuits which you consider to be baseless. In the present case (the old Mac user v. the RIAA), the lawsuit turned out to be based on facts which amounted to so much horseshit. There are remedies in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure for baseless filings. Rule 11 comes to mind, although I do not do much federal litigation. In this case, I suspect that the connection of the IP address to the person would probably be a sufficient prima facie basis for filing a lawsuit.
Federal courts operate on notice-based pleading, with the details of the lawsuit to be sorted out in discovery. When the RIAA discovered that its information was bad, it dropped the suit. This is insufficient to satisfy you, evidently. The "victim" has the opportunity to ask for sanctions, and it is well within the discretion of the court to grant or deny sanctions if something occurred that offends the court.
An additional criticism (not made by you but by others in this discussion) is apparently that the RIAA has big bucks to press these suits and that many people can't afford to defend them. That is not the RIAA's problem. If you would like to fund legal services for the underprivileged, I suggest that you contact your Congressman or, alternatively, donate money to the EFF or other entities that may provide assistance to aggrieved parties.
The part of this story that really irks me is that there is enormous focus on the innocent parties that the RIAA has swept up. Fine. That shouldn't happen. On the other hand, an enormous fraction of the people that the RIAA has pursued are, in fact, liable for contributory copyright infringement. Enormous numbers of people decided that they just didn't like copyright law (which is a perfectly valid point of view) and then decided to disregard it. The first rule of civil disobedience is to expect to be punished. Sorry, but I have zero sympathy for the freeloading filesharers whose day of reckoning is now at hand.
Flame away or mod me down, whatever. I have karma to burn.
I still have to go to my dentist to get flouride. The area where I live refuses to put it in the water. I think it's a conspiracy by the dentists. Either that, or there may be a significant element in the local population that fears pollution of their precious boodily liquids.
The "lowest highest point" idea is fairly difficult to convey. Drag it out at cocktail parties -- you'll surely be a hit. People think I'm so smart that they seem to be intimidated and they won't talk to me...
No. What I said was that Delaware had the lowest highest point, i.e. the lowest of the several states' "highest points" (e.g. Mount Davis in PA, Mount Washington in NH (I think), etc.).
Lowest highest point. Not lowest point. Not highest point. Compare the various "highest points" of all the states and see which one is the lowest, or least high.
Delaware actually has the lowest highest point [1] of any state in the union, and they may be in for a hateful time, too. This doesn't speak to average height above sea level, of course, it's just useful trivia.
In a couple million years, things will be pretty much back to normal and the race of uber intelligent cockroaches will be wondering how these silly bipedal organisms in the fossil record went extinct.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
My firm needed a file server, but the guys are cheap, cheap, cheap. I bought an IBM Netfinity server with a SCSI array, installed Red Hat 7.2, set up SAMBA and squid, and we haven't looked back. I back it up every now and then (usually weekly) with a USB hard drive that is stored off site.
I've been using OOO on my computer without telling abyone about it, and nobody has noticed. Our documents aren't grossly complex -- they usually consist of no more than twenty pages, and most are just numbered paragraphs or letters. Very basic formatting.
Our linux box has been running nearly two months with no intervention (it runs an absolute minimum of services in order to reduce complexity and the need for patching). The only reason we had downtime since it was installed was from power outages, and we've fixed that with a smart UPS. Each month it runs, I take a sip of scotch from the bottle that every lawyer has in his desk drawer. I think "happy birthday" and thank god that I don't have to screw with an NT (or win2k or whatever) box.
GF.
Instant Replay: "Why not make storage bootable?"
Yeah, yeah. What I meant was...compact (usb, CF, etc.) storage.
Smart ass.
Scott McNealy
Surely, it will fail then...
Seriously, the idea is the same. Computing is more and more commoditized, so where the cycles come from doesn't matter -- what matters is your data. Why then should the computing process be locked in by hardware or operating software? Applications still matter, since they are the means by which data is manipulated, but these can probably be squeezed into CF card or onto a secure network that you can reach with your CF card settings and ID and fat bandwidth. I think McNealy is on to something (I think I remember reading that piece you referenced), but he's been wrong (or early) so many times that I start to view his backing as an evil omen for any technology initiative.
I guess that XML and encryption are really the answers here, more than anything. Everything else is just details.
GF.
Could there be a "no taxing the internet" test case in the works as a result of this?
GF.
Why not make storage bootable?
/home with your OS and apps of choice would work as well.
Ok, ok, there are problems with this, but as storage becomes smaller and smaller, why not simply have a media card to contain all of this? I think that I have seen GB sized portable storage stuff (CompactFlash, USB keychain-type devices, etc.). These exceed CD storage. DVD would be an option as well, obviously.
As prices drop and hardware detection improves, there would be many specialized applications where storing the app and the OS on a completely removable disk would be possible. I've seen people mention MAME as a possibility (if you do it on CF, you could distribute the package and allow the addition of ROMs to avoid liability). A portable
Companies could possibly use something like this under certain circumstances (consulting firms that already "hotel" employees) to avoid having people lug around laptops -- give 'em a PDA with a CF card and set them loose. The home "hotel" could have plain old dummy terminals that would just require the user to plug in the CF card to start rolling. When logged into a "hotel" workstation, perhaps there would be a backup of new data on the card to a manly file system to deal with the inevitable "I lost my card" problems that will arise with tiny storage media.
Security is an issue, but it's nothing that encryption couldn't solve or at least address in most circumstances.
The "America's Army" application is just a slice of what could be done with this idea. I see a lot of people rejecting the idea of a specific disk for loading and running a single app and requiring a reboot for every app, but this does not need to be the case. The limitation of the America's Army thing (if used in an expanded manner) could be overcome with rewritable (not necessarily CD or DVD) media. Don't look at what the "America's Army" disc is -- look at how the idea could be extended and applied. Knoppix and things along those lines are just a start.
GF.
Targeted at the world wide traveller, it also looks like a good way to help prevent identity theft and getting nasty white powder in the mail."
Ok. Which item below is lesser or smaller than the risk of getting "nasty white powder in the mail":
a) A kernel hacker's desire for personal cleamliness
b) Microsoft's concern for your security
c) Natalie Portman's petrified grits
d) Having a piano drop on your head as you walk down the sidewalk
e) None
Answer: E.
This kind of FUD (essentially: prevent the risk of getting anthrax in the mail!) should be reserved for AV companies.
Please.
Maybe the service would be convenient. Maybe it would be uber geeky, but I submit that it reduces your risk of contracting anthrax through the mail from effectively zero to zero. Run a little risk-reward on that. I think that your money would be better spent on a tin foil hat (tm), as that would be a more effective way to reduce your risks from a variety of sources, such as mind control waves from outer space.
GF.
Perhaps you should get a post office box. The rental fee is minimal.
GF.
Are you fiscally conservative? Dean is WAY more conservative and responsible about spending than Bush is. Bush is an embarrassment to the right on that subject- he's spending way more than Clinton, he's out of control.
(1) Clinton did not have Bin Laden to deal with. Afghanistan accounts for a significant portion of the 87 billion recently requisitioned. The swamp in Afghanistan had to be drained. What has been done there is not by any means permanent, but it has taken away a prominent safe house for Al Quaida.
(2) Iraq blah blah blah Iraq.
(3) Fiscal stimulus was necessary to pull us out of the recession we were entering in the tail end of 2000. Tax cuts and increased spending, combined with monetary policy changes (cuts in interest rates) were needed. Bush, and the GOP Congress, delivered. The key is to roll back or slow down spending growth as the economy rebounds. The deficit (as a percentage of GDP) is not particularly high. It is lower than many of the Reagan-era deficits. Deficits are not, per se, a bad thing. Remember that about $150 billion per year of the debt is monetized, so the current year deficit is actually lower by about that much. The $500 billion deficit is really only $350 (excluding the underfunded pension obligations). As a percentage of GDP, that is very small. As the economy picks up, tax revenues should rise again as well.
(4) Not having a budget surplus prevents the creation of new spending programs. I love to see the Denocrats in the position of having to argue for massive tax increases to pay for national health insurance. That's a fair debate. Saying instead that they just want to take the surplus and spit it back in income redistribution via health insurance is a quite different argument, and an easier one to make. The GOP prevented them from using the latter argument.
(5) The deficit is a useful tool politically (in addition to the way mentioned above) as it makes the gub'ment seem profligate and wasteful. This lowers the perception of the average person about the gub'ment and makes him less willing to want the gub'ment to do anything for him.
This may all seem somewhat paranoid to you, but running deficits right now is the right thing to do to get the economy going and it is the right thing to do to keep permanent new spending programs from taking place (and no, tax cuts do not count as a spending program).
we can afford free health insurance for all children- thing called Dr. Dynasaur. We got the money for it, thanks to Dean.
No, you got it thanks to the taxpayers.
GF.
In other news, the Bush administration has decided to counter the Howard Dean campaign's effort to create a network of weblogs ("blogs") by giving Republican supporters access to the surplus WMD which were recently discovered at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland.
"We hope that our supporters use the smallpox virus in a way that will support our common goals" stated White House insider Karl Rove. "We think that the time has come to deal with the infidel huns who are attempting to thwart our ultimate goal of establishing a reactionary, protestant theocracy with President Bush as Ayatollah. Using smallpox in areas where there are concentrations of liberal and Democratic voters will surely help us to win an outright majority in the next election. Jew York, here comes Itchy and Scratchy!" Rove went on to describe the plan to trade smallpox-infected blankets to residents of New York City in exchange for wampum.
Democrats in Congress criticized the move, calling it cynical at best and mass murder at worst. In the Senate today, Ted Kennedy (D-MA) spoke to the issue, calling the use of biological weapons by Republican campaigners, "worse than anything than Daddy ever did, and that's saying a lot." Senator Kennedy was later found garroted in his chambers in what appears to be the work of a lone assassin. See our related story for information on the investigation, including the appointment of Chief Justice Rehnquist to a commission to investigate the assassination of Senator Kennedy.
Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) chastized the President for the move as well, calling it "barbaric". Senator Clinton was last seen ushering her husband, former President Bill Clinton, into a limosine bound for his office in Harlem. "Bill needs to be in the right place to do the most good during this crisis." Commentators noted that Senator Clinton did not seem alarmed that her husband was going into one of the hardest-hit areas. Staffer John McClintock was quoted as saying that [Senator Clinton] seemed to be "strangely peaceful" as former President Clinton left for Harlem and that "she danced a jig similar to the one Hitler did when his troops defeated the French."
GF.
[just laugh people, just laugh]
Thanks for the tip. Very, very cool. I do agree (with another poster) that there should be examples that are only HTML elements (no bitmaps). Otherwise, this is excellent, and it has got me thinking about some projects already.
GF.
This is exactly the reason I want the ability to choose which channels to get. Sure, I assume it's almost free to the cable company to carry QVC, but it's not like I care about it.
....I forget what other reason there is besides Steelers games. I am becoming more and more an advocate of pay-per-view for everything. I'd love to see a per hour charge option for cable/satellite TV, maybe something like 25 cents per hour, even with ads. I'd save tons.
I was responding to the guy that wanted ESPN and CNN and pretty much nothing else.
I think that a la carte is a nice idea, but it creates too many billing headaches for providers. Packages are the way to go, and if "basic" is too desirable, not many people would go for the premium craptacular package. Likewise, if you really want something, then you might be willing to pay a bunch to get it. The value of a channel to a cable subscriber is not the issue -- the issue is what the hard-core "I want it" guys will pay.
Cable and satellite have so many channels now that everything is divided by interest group. That is why most viewers think that there is so much shit on (well...aside from their natural critical thinking skills) -- interest programming is so fragmented that subgroups really want one channel but don't care about most other channels. They will pay premium prices to get what they want.
Someone might come along with an a la carte option (over the internet seems like a natural for this) but the big cable players would probably pressure the content providers not to deal with such an outfit. This would likely have major anti-trust implications.
One final point -- your system pays nothing to QVC -- they get paid by QVC. Shopping channels are different.
FWIW, I am a Directv subscriber (no, I haven't been sued -- I am an actual paying subscriber). I would gladly ditch it if (1) I could get Steelers games in my area and (2)
GF.
Perhaps most exciting, Peter Diamandis says he expects a winner within one year."
I would love to see an X-Prize winner before regular space shuttle flights resume.
GF.
How difficult is it to simply give me the products I want to pay for? Give me 1) Broadband internet access 2) the History channel 3) the Learning channel 4) Discovery 5) CNN's 6)CSPAN 7)FoodTV 8) Speedvision 9) ESPN and perhaps a few others. The rest is just noise that I don't want to pay for and never watch.
So, at most 15 channels plus broadband should run what $25-30? They can have the other 70 channels.
Something that you may not be aware of is that many channels are part of package deals with cable companies. If you want CNN, you have to carry TBS. If you want ESPN, you have to carry ESPN2, ABC's family channel thingy, etc.
Also, the prices charged for individual channels, such as ESPN, are quite high per cable subscriber. You aren't just paying for access to cable -- you are paying for the content as well even if you are just getting basic (since this usually is more than just local channels and shopping channels). Other than the local channels (which must be carried) and the shopping channels (which pay your cable company to be on their system), each channel has a cost to the system that carries it. Not surprisingly, ESPN and CNN are among the most-expensive cable channels because everyone wants them. Throw in the package deals and the cost of the cable plant, and the "basic" cable cost soon gets fairly high.
Your cable bill can be viewed as several separate and discrete components: cost recovery for the cable plant, overhead (ads, customer services, truck rolls, etc.), profit margin, content costs, and premium content costs (which are recovered by higher charges for premium packages). Municipalities also get money from the deals that they cut from the cable companies to provide service in your area (franchise feess/taxes).
If you want internet access or better basic cable options, a good idea is to mobilize people significantly in advance of the time that a franchise agreement for your municipality is about to expire. Let your local elected officials know what you think is important and organize a group of people so it's not just one person nagging. More often than you might suspect, the local board in charge of such things will consider your input.
The local chamber of commerce is a good place to start rallying the troops as well -- many local chambers are in favor of the idea of expanding broadband access, as it helps businesses as well as consumers. They might be willing to agitate with you or at least at the same time as you. If a local board sees people coming out of the woodwork on an issue, they are less likely to rubber stamp whatever is dumped into their laps by the cable company.
Someone with a better knowledge of the cable industry can fill in the details on component costs better than I can, but this is my general understanding of how things work with cable price policies.
GF.
See, he was making fun of the name GIMP because it is the type of thing a grandmother would for instance find inappropriate.
Not to be a dumbass, but why is "The Gimp" inappropriate? Merriam Webster doesn't tell me anything. The only time I've ever seen "gimp" anywhere in popular culture was in Pulp Fiction, and I don't think that the use there was anything like common or ordinary. A gimp is someone who walks with a limp.
So...what's the point again?
GF
http://www.zuggsoft.com/zmud16f.zip
It's free. You can't lose by trying it out. If you hate it, try something else.
GF.
Look around and you may be able to find an older version of zMud for free. Granted, it'll be on the order of 5-6 years old, but I bet you can dig one up.
GF.
IBM has the resources to make a test case of the GPL. I'm going to be very interested to see how this turns out.
GF.
SCO convinced Ren that SCO owned the root of the entire UNIX tree, and that Linux was just one branch of that tree.
UNIX has been 0wnz0r3d by sc0! w00t!
Hugs,
d4rl mcbr1d3
That's when my good pals Hancock, Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson, along with a few other buds, got together and came up with this whole fair trial system.
Actually, in everywhere but Louisiana, the legal systems were derived from the English common law system. Your "good pals" had nothing to do with the development of the courts in the US. Washington and Franklin did sign the Constitution, but Hancock wasn't there. Neither was Jefferson (he was in Paris bonking French chicks).
The Constitution did establish a federal court system and allowed Congress to establish the jurisdiction of the courts, but the state courts were left largely unaffected. Also, traditional notions of fair play and justice were not established by the Constitution -- rules of procedure and common law rules were adopted wholesale from existing state courts. In fact, federal courts hearing cases in the several states ultimately decided to follow state court rulings on substantive legal issues, or, in a case of first impression, they are to try to anticipate how a state's highest court would rule on an issue.
Thats when, well everybody in congress, who's names are too many to mention, (and not worth mentioning considering what they did) overturned two centuries worth of a tried and true system.
The common law is far older than two centuries. The courts have not overturned it, either. Neither has the Congress. You may not like the way that the courts are used, but tough titty -- your criticisms do not comprise a fair critique of the federal judiciary or the legal system in general.
On a final note, I am unaware of any Constitutional provision that protects people from obtaining properly copyrighted materials free of charge from more or less anonymous suppliers over the internet against the wishes of the rights holder. You may not like the law, but your remedy is at the ballot box, not in the courtroom.
I fully anticipate the hue and cry to the effect of "Ballot box? You're so naive!". On the other hand, that is the remedy for bad law. Additionally, you seem to have a problem with lawsuits which you consider to be baseless. In the present case (the old Mac user v. the RIAA), the lawsuit turned out to be based on facts which amounted to so much horseshit. There are remedies in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure for baseless filings. Rule 11 comes to mind, although I do not do much federal litigation. In this case, I suspect that the connection of the IP address to the person would probably be a sufficient prima facie basis for filing a lawsuit.
Federal courts operate on notice-based pleading, with the details of the lawsuit to be sorted out in discovery. When the RIAA discovered that its information was bad, it dropped the suit. This is insufficient to satisfy you, evidently. The "victim" has the opportunity to ask for sanctions, and it is well within the discretion of the court to grant or deny sanctions if something occurred that offends the court.
An additional criticism (not made by you but by others in this discussion) is apparently that the RIAA has big bucks to press these suits and that many people can't afford to defend them. That is not the RIAA's problem. If you would like to fund legal services for the underprivileged, I suggest that you contact your Congressman or, alternatively, donate money to the EFF or other entities that may provide assistance to aggrieved parties.
The part of this story that really irks me is that there is enormous focus on the innocent parties that the RIAA has swept up. Fine. That shouldn't happen. On the other hand, an enormous fraction of the people that the RIAA has pursued are, in fact, liable for contributory copyright infringement. Enormous numbers of people decided that they just didn't like copyright law (which is a perfectly valid point of view) and then decided to disregard it. The first rule of civil disobedience is to expect to be punished. Sorry, but I have zero sympathy for the freeloading filesharers whose day of reckoning is now at hand.
Flame away or mod me down, whatever. I have karma to burn.
GF.
SCO's response was issued this morning. This just gets more insane each passing week. My BSD discs will arrive in the next couple of days, so it's kind of moot for me, but Jesus, those SCO fuckers are crazy.
GF.
I still have to go to my dentist to get flouride. The area where I live refuses to put it in the water. I think it's a conspiracy by the dentists. Either that, or there may be a significant element in the local population that fears pollution of their precious boodily liquids.
GF.
The "lowest highest point" idea is fairly difficult to convey. Drag it out at cocktail parties -- you'll surely be a hit. People think I'm so smart that they seem to be intimidated and they won't talk to me...
GF.
No. What I said was that Delaware had the lowest highest point, i.e. the lowest of the several states' "highest points" (e.g. Mount Davis in PA, Mount Washington in NH (I think), etc.).
Lowest highest point. Not lowest point. Not highest point. Compare the various "highest points" of all the states and see which one is the lowest, or least high.
C'mon! It's perfectly clear!
GF.
Sell all Florida real estate.
Delaware actually has the lowest highest point [1] of any state in the union, and they may be in for a hateful time, too. This doesn't speak to average height above sea level, of course, it's just useful trivia.
GF.
[1] Source: Moxy Fruvous, Live Noise
In a couple million years, things will be pretty much back to normal and the race of uber intelligent cockroaches will be wondering how these silly bipedal organisms in the fossil record went extinct. ;-)
I for one welcome our new cockroach overlords...
GF.
[had to be said]