While in general I agree with everything you've said, I'd caution you to be just a little more temperate in your choice of language. Factory workers must be punctual because the assembly line can't move unless everyone is present at their posts, not because they may or may not lack some particular set of skills or aptitudes that a different worker or type of worker might or might not possess.
There are skilled and unskilled factory workers. Actually, I was thinking of a job I had during college, sorting audio casettes for return/restocking. The only "skill" involved was grouping titles together.
Nothing I wrote implies that all factory workers are unskilled; my point was to create a strong contrast with skilled knowledge workers. You're inferring a generalization I wasn't making.
Time was that Americans understood they were to treat all their fellow citizens equally. Granted, if you're a typical/.er, your childhood and adolescence were inundated with the propaganda of class warfare and class hatred, and that's about the only kind of political discourse you've ever heard, but it was not always so, and, for what it's worth, there are plenty of us out here in fly-over country who pay reverence to the old ways.
Now I think it's you who are generalizing, this time about the "typical/.er". I wasn't "inundated with the propaganda of class warfare and class hatred", but had I been, it might not have gone the way you assume: when I was a kid, Mom was a waitress; now Mom's an MD.
Maybe Ashcroft wants every viewer's RealPlayer to phone home IP addresses, to later check each address for running Kazaa.
I don't think I have time to figure out which sub-sub-sub-menu of the 11 tab page RealPlayer config contains the 47 ambiguously named checkboxes that I'll have to alternately check or uncheck in order to turn off the spyware.
How does treating creative workers like assembly line factory workers improve the company's bottom line?
How does having your biggest asset -- your employees -- breaking out in a sweat for being a minute late (and probably spending half the day worrying how many more late days they have in their "quota" before being punished), make the company more competitive?
How does explaining that your company has more petty rules than the local McDonald's franchise attract the best and brightest employees?
Don't get me wrong: some coordination is necessary, so that employees can confer with their fellow employees. But a goodly number of people aren't at their best at 7:30 (I sure as hell am not), and won't do their best work if some Pointy Haired Boss greets them each morning with a stop-watch in hand. This creates resentment, not loyalty.
Times are bad in IT right now. If the past is any guide, at some point in the not too distant future, times will be good again, and employees will be more scarce. And employees (and potential employees) will remember how the company treated people in these lean times.
I expect the poster's company will have a terrible time attracting talent at that point -- if they haven't already gone under by then, because only the most desperate and talentless of their employees won't have found jobs at a place that doesn't treat knowledge workers like unskilled factory workers.
Print quality image Combining 5mm pixel pitch, an RGB color model with 4096 colors, and a superior contrast ratio of 14:1
5mm =.5cm. Rather large for TV, but it could make a decent if blocky wallpaper.
The smallest frame size is 1m x 2m, so that would be 200 x 400 pixels, bigger than a Palm Pilot and bigger in pixel count but less square than a Zaurus.
Is there a more efficient way to do this with off the shelf hardware?
Get a wireless X-10 camera, and mount it on your helicoptor. Then a model-quality blonde who wears nothing other than bikinis will move in next door, digging out a pool in one doesn't yet exist, and spend her entire life lounging by the pool, moving only in order to keep herself centered in the lens of your camera.
It's all true, I saw it in a pop add. And another pop-up add, and another pop-up add, and then in a pop-up add.
This Harmonix-developed title, originally unveiled a couple of months back, sports "more than 35 tracks in all"
Ok, I don't want to beat a tired drum, to mix a metaphor into a bad pun, but...
Will it support any arbitrary mp3 I have?
35 tracks is pretty scanty, and I don't want to sing along to Mr. Mister (an 80s band?).
But I have three mp3s of "When I was a Lad", as I have three (legally purchased) different copies of Giilbert & Sullivan's "HMS Pinafore". Now that I'd love to sing along to.
Similarly, I have two complete recordings of Wagner's Ring Cycle, (one from emusic.com at $10 a month and one for $160.00 from Amazon.com -- emusic's not a bad bargain, although disc one of Seigfried's still missing).
And I have a German sing-along version of The Internationale played on guitar, apparently recorded in the heyday of the DDR (and I don't mean Dance Dance Revolution).
I mention these titles not to display my eclecticism (well, ok, not only to display it) but because these are titles that I can't ever imagine finding in a commercial Karaoke product (outside some "worker's paradise") but are at the same time ones I'd really enjoy singing along to.
And this is a general plea -- to manufacturers as well as to the Slashdot choir -- for open standards and interoperability: a karaoke machine tied to a proprietary standard which forces me to pay for karaoke versions of songs I already have, or for which the songs I want aren't available, is less than useless to me. I won't buy it, and the manufacturer won't get my money. A loss-loss.
A karaoke machine that plays my music, and makes my tone-deaf bleatings sound a bit more musical, however, would be worth my money. And I note that the open source software I use in my portable my mp3 player does provide a "poor man's" karaoke function by subtracting the right side of stereo output from the left and vice versa. It's not perfect, and that's why I'd pay for a more adaptable algorithim and the hardware to implement it.
But "Mr. Mister" and 34 other "Backstreet Boys In Sync with Britney and Other American Idles (sic)" I'm not interrested in. A proprietary and costly path to getting more tunes, I'm not paying for. A well designed open format karaoke machine, I'd vote for with my dollars.
Re:Free Software answers these points well.
on
New VOIP App. Profiled
·
· Score: 4, Informative
. So, if there is a free VoIP app out there (perhaps one with strong encryption too),
SpeakFreely is free (GPL'd) and works reasonably well even on dial-up, and offers encryption.
(Though when I last used it a couple of years ago, the encryption was difficult to set up, as it used an external and seperately installed PGP.)
Why didn't I use it more than just for testing? Most of the people I'd call don't use VOIP. It's the early adoption problem: "Nobody" else uses VOIP, so it's less than useful to use it.
Did you notice that the borate ion shown on the slime page (the reproducible slime, not the slime of society page) is a swastika?
I noticed that too. It's rather appropriate, though, that the Nazi symbol is central to slime, given that you can't very well be a Nazi without being slime.
[Much speculation by several posters about the patent, copyright, or trade secret status of the formula/recipe for Silly Putty.]
Here's what I find interesting: Slashdot links to a neat-o geek recipe for a toy, and the first thing many Slashdotters think about is the Intellectual Property status of the recipe.
I suspect that all these posters aren't lawyers; they're probably some form of "geek": engineers, programmers, mathematicians, chemists, what have you.
I also suspect that in the great years of Amerfican innovation in the 20th century -- even up to the last 10 years --, geeks would think of geek things: "wow, what could I do with a gallon of Silly Putty", "wonder if I could make it glow in the dark", etc.
Instead the geek's first reaction is more appropriate to the lawyer or law student. We've gotten so used to frivolous "business process" patents, blant SCO-like attempts to steal other people's ideas, and innovation stifling laws like the DMCA, that geeks have forgotten the instinct to innovate. Now, every geek puts on the lawyer hat, and considers, not "what could we do with that" but instead, "how could I get screwed over if I tried to innovate".
And if geeks aren't innovating, America's future has just gotten a lot more bleak.
I hope the plutocrats will remember that most of their riches (and comforts and health) grew out of geeks' playful desires to innovate, and realize that stifling innovation with Intellectual Property laws just means much less pie to go around, for plutocrat and peon alike.
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Actor John Ritter was found dead in his Los Angeles home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
They need to do what all the bong makers do, and they know it damn well. They need to market their products as being totally legal, and market the legal uses only. Then, they need to get some indy movie-maker to go and make a movie glorifying downloading music and movies and software and crap, ala CheechNChong.
Perhaps you missed the story about Tommy Chong getting nine months in the Federal Pen, courtesy of John Ashcroft.
among the arguments for sentencing the 65 year old to jail, rather than to a lesser sentence, was his lese majeste, in that he "grew wealthy glamorizing drug use and trivializing law enforcement in his films of the late 1970s and early 1980s."
In other words, you get a harsher sentence if you thumb your nose at Ashcroft's values, even if it's in a satirical movie presumably protected by the 1st Amendment.
Let's all feel safe that violent terrorist Tommy Chong has been locked up, and that Ashcroft has targetted a pornographer for 50 years in the Pen.
Osama who?
Hey, John Ashcroft has bigger fish to fry than Osama.
Let me just go on record as saying that that's the weirdest web page layout I've encountered in a long time.
Who in hell modded the parent offtopic? It's on topic, and it's accurate.
That web page rivals the worst corporate web pages: little content, annoying layout that forgets readers may have bigger or smaller monitors than the designer, and painfully small text that does nothing to explain the pretty but meaningless diagrams.
I can only guess the author is looking for for venture capital.
It's akin to Hillary's claims of a "vast right wing conspiracy" out to get Bill.
Oh, Hilary wasn't the first to blame conspiracies:
The first time I spoke to you was at the outbreak of the war when, thanks to the Anglo-French conspiracy against peace, every attempt at an understanding with Poland, which otherwise would have been possible, had been frustrated.
The most unscrupulous men of the present time had, as they admit today, decided as early as 1936 to involve the Reich, which in its peaceful work of reconstruction was becoming too powerful for them, in a new and bloody war and, if possible, to destroy it. They had finally succeeded in finding a State that was prepared for their interests and aims, and that State was Poland.
All my endeavors to come to an understanding with Britain were wrecked by the determination of a small clique which, whether from motives of hate or for the sake of material gain, rejected every German proposal for an understanding due to their resolve, which they never concealed, to resort to war, whatever happened.
The man behind this fanatical and diabolical plan to bring about war at whatever cost was Mr. Churchill. His associates were the men who now form the British Government.
These endeavors received most powerful support, both openly and secretly, from the so-called great democracies on both sides of the Atlantic. [....]
Behind these men there stood the great international Jewish financial interests that control the banks and the Stock Exchange as well as the armament industry. [....]
(Emphasis added. The author should be obvious. Go ahead and invoke Godwin's Law.)
A rat done bit my sister Nell with Whitey on the moon. Her face and arms began to swell and Whitey's on the moon. I can't pay no doctor bills but Whitey's on the moon. Ten years from now I'll be payin' still while Whitey's on the moon.
The man just upped my rent last night cuz Whitey's on the moon. No hot water, no toilets, no lights but Whitey's on the moon. I wonder why he's uppin me. Cuz Whitey's on the moon? I was already givin' him fifty a week but now Whitey's on the moon.
Taxes takin' my whole damn check, The junkies makin' me a nervous wreck, The price of food is goin' up, And as if all that shit wasn't enough:
A rat done bit my sister Nell with Whitey on the moon. Her face and arms began to swell but Whitey's on the moon. Was all that money I made last year for Whitey on the moon? How come there ain't no money here? Hmm! Whitey's on the moon.
Ya know, I just about had my fill of Whitey on the moon. I think I'll send these doctor bills airmail special.... to Whitey on the moon.
Yes, as opposed to other (non-commercially produced I guess) software where the support is non-existent (you know where the source is, there's comments too, maybe).
I've had "problems" with three or four open source software products. I put scare quotes around "problems" because in most cases my "problems" amounted to feature requests.
In each case, the "problem" was resolved with an email to the programmer.
I noticed some example SQL in the postgresql online manual had some minor inaccuracies. I sent an email with corrections, the corrections were incorporated in the manual, I was credited. End of problem.
CDex, an excellent MS-Windows CD ripper, had some problems incorporating extremly long ID3 tags into ripped MP3s. I emailed the programmer, Albert Faber, and in a matter of a few days, a fixed version was available for download. End of problem.
SciTE, the best programmer's editor I've found to date, didn't respond correctly to my mouse wheel settings. I emailed the programmer, Neil Hodgson, and (since I had access to the source) indicated some lines of code I thought responsible. Mr. Hodgson went so far as to download updated versions of the MS drivers to his own machine, and got back to me in about four hours -- despite a nearly 12 hour difference in our time zones. I was able to compile a private build with a fix, and the programmer's fix was available a week or so later in the standard build. End of problem.
MP3BookHelper, a truly phenomenal ID3 tagger, had no problems, per se, but I wanted additional features. Over the course of several months, the programmer, Vlad Skarzhevskyy, incorporated all but one of several features I asked for, usually producing a beta within 24 to 48 hours of the request. (The one feature rejected involved a user interface default value; Vlad correctly decided my proposal was at odds with MP3BookHelper's user interface standards.) No problems.
In two of these cases, I was able to look at the code myself and figure out, at least in general terms, where the problem was. In the other two cases I could have done so, but didn't need to -- but felt empowered knowing that I could assist in fixing the problem myself.
In all cases, I made a point of thanking the programmers for their hard work and quality products, and of asking for, rather than demanding, a fix, while giving what I hoped were useful clues as to the origin of the problem. And in all cases I got what I wanted far faster, and with far less frustration, than any tech support line could provide.
Please let me know what closed source software gives this sort of problem resolution, and how much the support contract is.
Such anti[-]cyborg adituds are hardly limited to the deaf community. About a year ago I broke my wrist; it was a bad break so a cast wasn't enugh to keep it set proporly. I had to get an exturnal fixator*, basicly there was a bunch of metal sticking out of my wrist. Most people eather thougt it was cool or though't it was a good thing, but couldn't look at it w/o turning pale, but some people seemed to think it was wrong somehow, like I wasn't fully human for exsepting the device[ ](I could have cosen to lose the use of that hand) thankfully I only needed this a few months, about as long as a cast, but it was an interesting experence [;] on a side note walking threw town carying a sword draws far less attention...
I fervently hope your wrist heals enugh that you'll be able type again without appearing to emulate Tom Sawyer's diction.
* fixator is actually properly spelled and used: it's [a] device providing rigid immobilization through external skeletal fixation by means of rods (f.'s) attached to pins which are placed in or through the bone.
You burn can burn your tracks to a CD. Whats the issue?
1) For a number of people, apparently not.
2) Why would I want to download an loss-y compressed file and then uncompress it to a.wav and rip it onto a CD? This is the antithesis of conveneient.
I want to play the music on my computer and on my MP3 player. Period. If I can't do that, it doesn't matter how low the price per track is. It's useless at any price.
And no, my MP3 player isn't going to be on BuyMusic.com's "approved player" list. It only plays MP3s, not WMAs, and the software is open source.
BuyMusic.com is useless to me. eMusic.com gives me non-DRM'd MP3s encoded with a decent LAME setting, all (where all is defined as 2000 tracks) I can download, for $10 a month.
BuyMusic.com isn't what we;ve been asking for from the music industry. It's the antithesis: crappy DRM, annoying DRM hoops to jump through, no media conversion, and high prices (since I can get a loss-less physical CD for about the same price).
If you're into indie stuff, then emusic looks like quite a bargain.
I should note that emusic.com has a nice classical selection as well. They have recently added a number of Urania recordings from the 1950s -- yes, the technical quality could be higher -- of Furtwangler, Karajan, etc., doing a bunch of Wagner. This includes a complete "Das Rheingold", a "Die Walkure", a "Die Meistersinger", and a "Reinzi".
I've also gotten about 213 Bach tracks, several Furtwagler Beethoven symphonies, etc.
If you're looking to expand your musical tastes in a classical direction without spending a fortune, emusic.com is very attractive.
Slashdot Mirror
While in general I agree with everything you've said, I'd caution you to be just a little more temperate in your choice of language. Factory workers must be punctual because the assembly line can't move unless everyone is present at their posts, not because they may or may not lack some particular set of skills or aptitudes that a different worker or type of worker might or might not possess.
/.er, your childhood and adolescence were inundated with the propaganda of class warfare and class hatred, and that's about the only kind of political discourse you've ever heard, but it was not always so, and, for what it's worth, there are plenty of us out here in fly-over country who pay reverence to the old ways.
/.er". I wasn't "inundated with the propaganda of class warfare and class hatred", but had I been, it might not have gone the way you assume: when I was a kid, Mom was a waitress; now Mom's an MD.
There are skilled and unskilled factory workers. Actually, I was thinking of a job I had during college, sorting audio casettes for return/restocking. The only "skill" involved was grouping titles together.
Nothing I wrote implies that all factory workers are unskilled; my point was to create a strong contrast with skilled knowledge workers. You're inferring a generalization I wasn't making.
Time was that Americans understood they were to treat all their fellow citizens equally. Granted, if you're a typical
Now I think it's you who are generalizing, this time about the "typical
Crap. The webcast requires RealPlayer.
Maybe Ashcroft wants every viewer's RealPlayer to phone home IP addresses, to later check each address for running Kazaa.
I don't think I have time to figure out which sub-sub-sub-menu of the 11 tab page RealPlayer config contains the 47 ambiguously named checkboxes that I'll have to alternately check or uncheck in order to turn off the spyware.
How does treating creative workers like assembly line factory workers improve the company's bottom line?
;) +1 Funny for you.
That's an easy one. When you dock somone's pay, you save money.
Yeah. Maybe if we make them come in at 3:00 AM, we can get them working for free.
But seriously, you've got to figure in the cost of recruiting a replacement after you've docked him the third time and he quits in disgust.
How does treating creative workers like assembly line factory workers improve the company's bottom line?
How does having your biggest asset -- your employees -- breaking out in a sweat for being a minute late (and probably spending half the day worrying how many more late days they have in their "quota" before being punished), make the company more competitive?
How does explaining that your company has more petty rules than the local McDonald's franchise attract the best and brightest employees?
Don't get me wrong: some coordination is necessary, so that employees can confer with their fellow employees. But a goodly number of people aren't at their best at 7:30 (I sure as hell am not), and won't do their best work if some Pointy Haired Boss greets them each morning with a stop-watch in hand. This creates resentment, not loyalty.
Times are bad in IT right now. If the past is any guide, at some point in the not too distant future, times will be good again, and employees will be more scarce. And employees (and potential employees) will remember how the company treated people in these lean times.
I expect the poster's company will have a terrible time attracting talent at that point -- if they haven't already gone under by then, because only the most desperate and talentless of their employees won't have found jobs at a place that doesn't treat knowledge workers like unskilled factory workers.
5mm =
The smallest frame size is 1m x 2m, so that would be 200 x 400 pixels, bigger than a Palm Pilot and bigger in pixel count but less square than a Zaurus.
4096 colors is low compared to a modern PC.
Can it be produced cheaply enough -- and with high enough resolution -- to replace wallpaper?
Would it work as a large TV monitor? The frame rate is up to 70/sec, so the question, again, is resolution.
Is there a more efficient way to do this with off the shelf hardware?
d ", scrolbar='no', closable='no', alwaysontop='yes', believable='no');</script>
Get a wireless X-10 camera, and mount it on your helicoptor. Then a model-quality blonde who wears nothing other than bikinis will move in next door, digging out a pool in one doesn't yet exist, and spend her entire life lounging by the pool, moving only in order to keep herself centered in the lens of your camera.
It's all true, I saw it in a pop add. And another pop-up add, and another pop-up add, and then in a pop-up add.
<script language="ECMAScript"> window.open("http://www.x10.com/annoyingflashinga
This Harmonix-developed title, originally unveiled a couple of months back, sports "more than 35 tracks in all"
Ok, I don't want to beat a tired drum, to mix a metaphor into a bad pun, but...
Will it support any arbitrary mp3 I have?
35 tracks is pretty scanty, and I don't want to sing along to Mr. Mister (an 80s band?).
But I have three mp3s of "When I was a Lad", as I have three (legally purchased) different copies of Giilbert & Sullivan's "HMS Pinafore". Now that I'd love to sing along to.
Similarly, I have two complete recordings of Wagner's Ring Cycle, (one from emusic.com at $10 a month and one for $160.00 from Amazon.com -- emusic's not a bad bargain, although disc one of Seigfried's still missing).
And I have a German sing-along version of The Internationale played on guitar, apparently recorded in the heyday of the DDR (and I don't mean Dance Dance Revolution).
I mention these titles not to display my eclecticism (well, ok, not only to display it) but because these are titles that I can't ever imagine finding in a commercial Karaoke product (outside some "worker's paradise") but are at the same time ones I'd really enjoy singing along to.
And this is a general plea -- to manufacturers as well as to the Slashdot choir -- for open standards and interoperability: a karaoke machine tied to a proprietary standard which forces me to pay for karaoke versions of songs I already have, or for which the songs I want aren't available, is less than useless to me. I won't buy it, and the manufacturer won't get my money. A loss-loss.
A karaoke machine that plays my music, and makes my tone-deaf bleatings sound a bit more musical, however, would be worth my money. And I note that the open source software I use in my portable my mp3 player does provide a "poor man's" karaoke function by subtracting the right side of stereo output from the left and vice versa. It's not perfect, and that's why I'd pay for a more adaptable algorithim and the hardware to implement it.
But "Mr. Mister" and 34 other "Backstreet Boys In Sync with Britney and Other American Idles (sic)" I'm not interrested in. A proprietary and costly path to getting more tunes, I'm not paying for. A well designed open format karaoke machine, I'd vote for with my dollars.
. So, if there is a free VoIP app out there (perhaps one with strong encryption too),
SpeakFreely is free (GPL'd) and works reasonably well even on dial-up, and offers encryption.
(Though when I last used it a couple of years ago, the encryption was difficult to set up, as it used an external and seperately installed PGP.)
Why didn't I use it more than just for testing? Most of the people I'd call don't use VOIP. It's the early adoption problem: "Nobody" else uses VOIP, so it's less than useful to use it.
Did you notice that the borate ion shown on the slime page (the reproducible slime, not the slime of society page) is a swastika?
I noticed that too. It's rather appropriate, though, that the Nazi symbol is central to slime, given that you can't very well be a Nazi without being slime.
[Much speculation by several posters about the patent, copyright, or trade secret status of the formula/recipe for Silly Putty.]
Here's what I find interesting: Slashdot links to a neat-o geek recipe for a toy, and the first thing many Slashdotters think about is the Intellectual Property status of the recipe.
I suspect that all these posters aren't lawyers; they're probably some form of "geek": engineers, programmers, mathematicians, chemists, what have you.
I also suspect that in the great years of Amerfican innovation in the 20th century -- even up to the last 10 years --, geeks would think of geek things: "wow, what could I do with a gallon of Silly Putty", "wonder if I could make it glow in the dark", etc.
Instead the geek's first reaction is more appropriate to the lawyer or law student. We've gotten so used to frivolous "business process" patents, blant SCO-like attempts to steal other people's ideas, and innovation stifling laws like the DMCA, that geeks have forgotten the instinct to innovate. Now, every geek puts on the lawyer hat, and considers, not "what could we do with that" but instead, "how could I get screwed over if I tried to innovate".
And if geeks aren't innovating, America's future has just gotten a lot more bleak.
I hope the plutocrats will remember that most of their riches (and comforts and health) grew out of geeks' playful desires to innovate, and realize that stifling innovation with Intellectual Property laws just means much less pie to go around, for plutocrat and peon alike.
This is in no way a troll.
It may be an opinion a moderator didn't agree with, but it's not a troll.
Please, if you diagree, reply with a cogent argument.
I've had moderator priviledges and an "excellent" karma for over a year, and I've not mdded anyone down once (I'm pretty sure of this record).
Now this is the standard Slashdot troll... *insert name* was found dead today. I dismissed it last night thinking it couldn't possibly be true.
..." announcement.
Yeah, I wanted to see what the Slashdot reaction would be to a true "Sad news
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Actor John Ritter was found dead in his Los Angeles home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
They need to do what all the bong makers do, and they know it damn well. They need to market their products as being totally legal, and market the legal uses only. Then, they need to get some indy movie-maker to go and make a movie glorifying downloading music and movies and software and crap, ala CheechNChong.
Perhaps you missed the story about Tommy Chong getting nine months in the Federal Pen, courtesy of John Ashcroft.
among the arguments for sentencing the 65 year old to jail, rather than to a lesser sentence, was his lese majeste , in that he "grew wealthy glamorizing drug use and trivializing law enforcement in his films of the late 1970s and early 1980s."
In other words, you get a harsher sentence if you thumb your nose at Ashcroft's values, even if it's in a satirical movie presumably protected by the 1st Amendment.
Let's all feel safe that violent terrorist Tommy Chong has been locked up, and that Ashcroft has targetted a pornographer for 50 years in the Pen.
Osama who?
Hey, John Ashcroft has bigger fish to fry than Osama.
What if all you watched was porn?
Then you'd be a stereotypical slashdotter.
But you'll have to excuse me while I clean "Becky"'s keyboard.
Let me just go on record as saying that that's the weirdest web page layout I've encountered in a long time.
Who in hell modded the parent offtopic? It's on topic, and it's accurate.
That web page rivals the worst corporate web pages: little content, annoying layout that forgets readers may have bigger or smaller monitors than the designer, and painfully small text that does nothing to explain the pretty but meaningless diagrams.
I can only guess the author is looking for for venture capital.
Why does every porn joke get instantly rated "5, Funny"?
I'd explain, but it takes too long given that I'm typing one-handed.
Oh, Hilary wasn't the first to blame conspiracies:
(Emphasis added. The author should be obvious. Go ahead and invoke Godwin's Law.)
A rat done bit my sister Nell with Whitey on the moon.
Her face and arms began to swell and Whitey's on the moon.
I can't pay no doctor bills but Whitey's on the moon.
Ten years from now I'll be payin' still while Whitey's on the moon.
The man just upped my rent last night cuz Whitey's on the moon.
No hot water, no toilets, no lights but Whitey's on the moon.
I wonder why he's uppin me. Cuz Whitey's on the moon?
I was already givin' him fifty a week but now Whitey's on the moon.
Taxes takin' my whole damn check,
The junkies makin' me a nervous wreck,
The price of food is goin' up,
And as if all that shit wasn't enough:
A rat done bit my sister Nell with Whitey on the moon.
Her face and arms began to swell but Whitey's on the moon.
Was all that money I made last year for Whitey on the moon?
How come there ain't no money here? Hmm! Whitey's on the moon.
Ya know, I just about had my fill of Whitey on the moon.
I think I'll send these doctor bills
airmail special....
to Whitey on the moon.
-- Gil-Scott Heron (1972)
Yes, as opposed to other (non-commercially produced I guess) software where the support is non-existent (you know where the source is, there's comments too, maybe).
I've had "problems" with three or four open source software products. I put scare quotes around "problems" because in most cases my "problems" amounted to feature requests.
In each case, the "problem" was resolved with an email to the programmer.
I noticed some example SQL in the postgresql online manual had some minor inaccuracies. I sent an email with corrections, the corrections were incorporated in the manual, I was credited. End of problem.
CDex, an excellent MS-Windows CD ripper, had some problems incorporating extremly long ID3 tags into ripped MP3s. I emailed the programmer, Albert Faber, and in a matter of a few days, a fixed version was available for download. End of problem.
SciTE, the best programmer's editor I've found to date, didn't respond correctly to my mouse wheel settings. I emailed the programmer, Neil Hodgson, and (since I had access to the source) indicated some lines of code I thought responsible. Mr. Hodgson went so far as to download updated versions of the MS drivers to his own machine, and got back to me in about four hours -- despite a nearly 12 hour difference in our time zones. I was able to compile a private build with a fix, and the programmer's fix was available a week or so later in the standard build. End of problem.
MP3BookHelper, a truly phenomenal ID3 tagger, had no problems, per se, but I wanted additional features. Over the course of several months, the programmer, Vlad Skarzhevskyy, incorporated all but one of several features I asked for, usually producing a beta within 24 to 48 hours of the request. (The one feature rejected involved a user interface default value; Vlad correctly decided my proposal was at odds with MP3BookHelper's user interface standards.) No problems.
In two of these cases, I was able to look at the code myself and figure out, at least in general terms, where the problem was. In the other two cases I could have done so, but didn't need to -- but felt empowered knowing that I could assist in fixing the problem myself.
In all cases, I made a point of thanking the programmers for their hard work and quality products, and of asking for, rather than demanding, a fix, while giving what I hoped were useful clues as to the origin of the problem. And in all cases I got what I wanted far faster, and with far less frustration, than any tech support line could provide.
Please let me know what closed source software gives this sort of problem resolution, and how much the support contract is.
Even reputable computer shops now insist that you show them your Windows license before they'll allow you to buy an OS-less computer.
Amazing if true. Do you have a cite for this?
Such anti[-]cyborg adituds are hardly limited to the deaf community. About a year ago I broke my wrist; it was a bad break so a cast wasn't enugh to keep it set proporly. I had to get an exturnal fixator*, basicly there was a bunch of metal sticking out of my wrist. Most people eather thougt it was cool or though't it was a good thing, but couldn't look at it w/o turning pale, but some people seemed to think it was wrong somehow, like I wasn't fully human for exsepting the device[ ](I could have cosen to lose the use of that hand)
thankfully I only needed this a few months, about as long as a cast, but it was an interesting experence [;]
on a side note walking threw town carying a sword draws far less attention...
I fervently hope your wrist heals enugh that you'll be able type again without appearing to emulate Tom Sawyer's diction.
* fixator is actually properly spelled and used: it's [a] device providing rigid immobilization through external skeletal fixation by means of rods (f.'s) attached to pins which are placed in or through the bone.
You burn can burn your tracks to a CD. Whats the issue?
.wav and rip it onto a CD? This is the antithesis of conveneient.
1) For a number of people, apparently not.
2) Why would I want to download an loss-y compressed file and then uncompress it to a
I want to play the music on my computer and on my MP3 player. Period. If I can't do that, it doesn't matter how low the price per track is. It's useless at any price.
And no, my MP3 player isn't going to be on BuyMusic.com's "approved player" list. It only plays MP3s, not WMAs, and the software is open source.
BuyMusic.com is useless to me. eMusic.com gives me non-DRM'd MP3s encoded with a decent LAME setting, all (where all is defined as 2000 tracks) I can download, for $10 a month.
BuyMusic.com isn't what we;ve been asking for from the music industry. It's the antithesis: crappy DRM, annoying DRM hoops to jump through, no media conversion, and high prices (since I can get a loss-less physical CD for about the same price).
If you're into indie stuff, then emusic looks like quite a bargain.
I should note that emusic.com has a nice classical selection as well. They have recently added a number of Urania recordings from the 1950s -- yes, the technical quality could be higher -- of Furtwangler, Karajan, etc., doing a bunch of Wagner. This includes a complete "Das Rheingold", a "Die Walkure", a "Die Meistersinger", and a "Reinzi".
I've also gotten about 213 Bach tracks, several Furtwagler Beethoven symphonies, etc.
If you're looking to expand your musical tastes in a classical direction without spending a fortune, emusic.com is very attractive.