Or do what I did and buy a cheap (£20 / $30), generic*, DVD player that doesn't pay any attention to the 'force watch' nonsense. Plus I made it region free after spending almost a minute searching the internet and pressing some buttons on the remote conrtol.
* - it's Hyundai branded but I've seen the firmware on many differnt machines.
...It's unlikely too many people would want to just ride the train and not need a car on the other end.
Then why not just make some (most?) of the carridges like they are on the Eurostar (see http://www.eurostar.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurostar) and allow people to just drive straight onto the train? If it's only a 30 minute trip then people can stay in their cars. Just need to stick a couple of toilets in each carridge.
If someone is coming into the UK illegally (in the back of a truck for example) then they won't be coming through the 'official-wait-in-line-to-processed' queue. So how exactly will this new uber-database be able to know they've come into the country?
And as is typical with anything this government wants to introduce they've thrown the 'it'll stop illegal immigrant / cure terrorism / repeal child porn' card. However they never, ever tell you how *exactly* it's going to achieve those goals. And then they'll change these goals when it's been introduced, pretending never to have said that it'll actually have anything to do with the previous goals.
The only reason I can see for the current government to be introducing all these half-baked schemes is that they - like everyone else - can see that they're not getting back in at the next election and they're on a mission to screw things up for the next lot.
However, I seem to remember - and do hope to be corrected - that there is a law that the incoming government can't be held to any contracts agreed by the previous one. Knowing this lot though, it's probably been quietly repealed.
If this is with regard to a residential network provided by the universities (and not the university network as such), wouldn't the provision of this put them in the same position of an ISP, and therefore protected by the same regulations that stop ISPs getting sued for the content that goes across their network?
If you're sent one of these letters that alleges that you've been 'pirating' film/music/whatever but you haven't been trading/downloading in anything copyrighted - and therefore innocent against these allegations - is there not a case for bringing some kind of libel or defamation action against your ISP, the lawyers and the BPI?
It seems that these problems are more a US problem than one for Europeans. It seems that the carriers in the US are all about locking the phones down so much that to get any 'proper' use out of them they've got to throw money after money after money to their service provided.
I'm in the UK and the phone I've got (a Sony Ericsson K850i) comes with absolutely nothing locked down (except perhaps the firmware, but that's trivial to bypass). I can bluetooth anything (pictures, video, mp3s, etc) to and from the device to any other device that'll support them. I can do the same with the supplied USB cable. I don't even need to install the Sony Ericsson software to do so as the device gets picked up as either a music player or a mass storage device - and I get to choose which one it identifies itself to the computer as. All of which costs me no (extra) money to do.
I think the US needs to be asking it's carriers why they are so far behind offering what we Europeans get - or to phrase it slightly differently - why they seem so intent on selling crippled phones just to take some more money out of the customer's pockets...
not to mention that the way the results are displayed is super ugly, and awkward to use. and it breaks on ie6*. and the results it brings are mostly from spam/link farm type places too. think this one'll get lumped in with all those other search engines i never use (altavista, live, ask, etc) and i'll stick with something that produces result that might be of some use to me.
* - yes, i know, iknow, but it's a work computer so no firefox..
I clicked on the print link in TFA so I didn't have to wade through 8 pages of adverts - and the 'printable' page had flash adverts on it... Now I know printers are getting good, but...
...but CCTV has been shown to reduce the severity of crime - reducing the police response time to muggings, for example, leading to less severe injuries to the victim.
you still get mugged though. so instead of a massive beating and all your stuff robbed, you get a little beating and all of your stuff robbed. all with the same chance of them ever catching who's done it as the camera not being there.
1) The Selectively Deaf - they half listen to what you ask them to do, get you continually repeat everything, and then invariably end up pressing the wrong thing. Which is your fault because they claim you didn't tell them properly.
2) The Hard of Thinking - the people who even with the most explicit instruction still can't follow what you're telling them. I've had users completely fail to find the 'Start' button, the menu bar or even where the '\' key is, and not forgetting the woman who was employed in an *admin* position who didn't know how to make text bold in Word. You can tell them until you're blue in the face but they'll just never get it. These are the kind of people who get employed so companies can be seen to be an equal opportunity employer...
3) The Try it Once-rs - They try and do something once, and if it doesn't work first time out, they call the helpdesk rather than trying a second time. The amount of times I've had people call up claiming their email doesn't work when the problem is that they've tried it once and spelt their password wong is truely staggering.
MPAA boss Dan Glickman praised the bill saying that, 'films left costs foreign and domestic distributors, retailers and others $18 billion a year,' though Ars points out that it allegedly costs the studios only $6 billion."
I've said it before and I'll say it again, money you haven't earned isn't a cost!
If 'film left' (or 'theft' as it's more commanly known) is costing them $18 billion a year then they must be burning a fuckload of dvds off...
league tables and exam companies
the schools are now judged on how well they're doing based an a collection of league tables - how many get grade a (or a*, or a**, not sure what the current number of stars is(1)), how many get a-c, etc. their position in the table affects their funding.
so, they try to get as many kids as possible into the a-c bracket. even going so far as to 'discourage' kids who might be getting a d-grade or below from taking the exam.
the other way to get everyone in the magic a-c bracket is to get them an 'easier' exam. and they have to buy these exam papers. so if you're a company selling 'easier' exams and the schools are looking for 'easier' exam papers, well, hey presto! the kids get the 'easier' exam papers.
(1) - that's another scam the exam boards brought in to get more people falling into the grade a-c bracket, without the a* there'd only be 3 grades in that bracket rather than the 4 there are now)
if i remember correctly, you could do a forbid() that'd stop all the multitasking, or at least give your task the priority. there were some reasons for using it. though off the top of my head i can't think of any legitimate ones.
This alone has cost the music industry as much as £1.1 billion in lost retail sales since 2004.
'Lost sales' (or money you haven't earned for whatever reason) IS NOT a cost!
A cost is money you've spent in the course of your business. Electricity, postage, they're costs. Money you didn't earn isn't.
And wouldn't £1.1 billion is lost sales equate to approx 100 million albums that weren't sold? this page says there were only 150 million albums sold in the uk in 2006.
And this page says that the total uk music sales only came to £1.7 billion (retail, for physical and digital).
and by copying the management of those above you, you're stuck in a cycle where any new ideas get rejected because they're not those of the people above you. your doomed to repeat the failings of those who went before you. now that's the real world.
I read in the paper (think it was the Metro on the bus, but I'm not totally sure) that they're going to to have pre-recorded messages for these camera's ('pick up your litter', 'stop pissing in that bush', etc) and that they're going to get children to record these messages as they believe that adults will be more shamed into behaving properly if they are being admonished by a child.
I've been wondering about that. For the past couple of weeks some (insert random collection of expletives) spammers have been sending out their crap with one of my domains as the sender and reply addresses, so since then i've been dealing with mailservers bouncing the spam back to me to tell me it's spam. It's mailservers bouncing spam that's contributing to this too. I'm probably getting about 30 or 40 a day of these coming back. So, admin folk, stop bouncing the spam back. Just 'cos it's got my address on it doesn't mean I've sent it.
Slashdot Mirror
As we know from Blackadder, Kate is short for Bob.
Courtesy of the Compaq support people - FAQ2859
Or do what I did and buy a cheap (£20 / $30), generic*, DVD player that doesn't pay any attention to the 'force watch' nonsense. Plus I made it region free after spending almost a minute searching the internet and pressing some buttons on the remote conrtol.
* - it's Hyundai branded but I've seen the firmware on many differnt machines.
The blogger is... rewarded by the /. community with healthy ad revenue and page views.
oh come on, this is slashdot - nobody reads TFAs...
...It's unlikely too many people would want to just ride the train and not need a car on the other end.
Then why not just make some (most?) of the carridges like they are on the Eurostar (see http://www.eurostar.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurostar) and allow people to just drive straight onto the train? If it's only a 30 minute trip then people can stay in their cars. Just need to stick a couple of toilets in each carridge.
If someone is coming into the UK illegally (in the back of a truck for example) then they won't be coming through the 'official-wait-in-line-to-processed' queue. So how exactly will this new uber-database be able to know they've come into the country?
And as is typical with anything this government wants to introduce they've thrown the 'it'll stop illegal immigrant / cure terrorism / repeal child porn' card. However they never, ever tell you how *exactly* it's going to achieve those goals. And then they'll change these goals when it's been introduced, pretending never to have said that it'll actually have anything to do with the previous goals.
The only reason I can see for the current government to be introducing all these half-baked schemes is that they - like everyone else - can see that they're not getting back in at the next election and they're on a mission to screw things up for the next lot.
However, I seem to remember - and do hope to be corrected - that there is a law that the incoming government can't be held to any contracts agreed by the previous one. Knowing this lot though, it's probably been quietly repealed.
If this is with regard to a residential network provided by the universities (and not the university network as such), wouldn't the provision of this put them in the same position of an ISP, and therefore protected by the same regulations that stop ISPs getting sued for the content that goes across their network?
If you're sent one of these letters that alleges that you've been 'pirating' film/music/whatever but you haven't been trading/downloading in anything copyrighted - and therefore innocent against these allegations - is there not a case for bringing some kind of libel or defamation action against your ISP, the lawyers and the BPI?
The hands could simply spin around faster and faster as the situation worsens...
and the breeze would keep the traders nice and cool..
It seems that these problems are more a US problem than one for Europeans. It seems that the carriers in the US are all about locking the phones down so much that to get any 'proper' use out of them they've got to throw money after money after money to their service provided.
I'm in the UK and the phone I've got (a Sony Ericsson K850i) comes with absolutely nothing locked down (except perhaps the firmware, but that's trivial to bypass). I can bluetooth anything (pictures, video, mp3s, etc) to and from the device to any other device that'll support them. I can do the same with the supplied USB cable. I don't even need to install the Sony Ericsson software to do so as the device gets picked up as either a music player or a mass storage device - and I get to choose which one it identifies itself to the computer as. All of which costs me no (extra) money to do.
I think the US needs to be asking it's carriers why they are so far behind offering what we Europeans get - or to phrase it slightly differently - why they seem so intent on selling crippled phones just to take some more money out of the customer's pockets...
not to mention that the way the results are displayed is super ugly, and awkward to use. and it breaks on ie6*. and the results it brings are mostly from spam/link farm type places too. think this one'll get lumped in with all those other search engines i never use (altavista, live, ask, etc) and i'll stick with something that produces result that might be of some use to me.
* - yes, i know, iknow, but it's a work computer so no firefox..
I clicked on the print link in TFA so I didn't have to wade through 8 pages of adverts - and the 'printable' page had flash adverts on it... Now I know printers are getting good, but...
so you'd rather be in the position of having to prove yourself innocent then have them prove your guilt?
My personal favourites -
1) The Selectively Deaf - they half listen to what you ask them to do, get you continually repeat everything, and then invariably end up pressing the wrong thing. Which is your fault because they claim you didn't tell them properly.
2) The Hard of Thinking - the people who even with the most explicit instruction still can't follow what you're telling them. I've had users completely fail to find the 'Start' button, the menu bar or even where the '\' key is, and not forgetting the woman who was employed in an *admin* position who didn't know how to make text bold in Word. You can tell them until you're blue in the face but they'll just never get it. These are the kind of people who get employed so companies can be seen to be an equal opportunity employer...
3) The Try it Once-rs - They try and do something once, and if it doesn't work first time out, they call the helpdesk rather than trying a second time. The amount of times I've had people call up claiming their email doesn't work when the problem is that they've tried it once and spelt their password wong is truely staggering.
MPAA boss Dan Glickman praised the bill saying that, 'films left costs foreign and domestic distributors, retailers and others $18 billion a year,' though Ars points out that it allegedly costs the studios only $6 billion."
I've said it before and I'll say it again, money you haven't earned isn't a cost!
If 'film left' (or 'theft' as it's more commanly known) is costing them $18 billion a year then they must be burning a fuckload of dvds off...
no, but three lefts do...
league tables and exam companies the schools are now judged on how well they're doing based an a collection of league tables - how many get grade a (or a*, or a**, not sure what the current number of stars is(1)), how many get a-c, etc. their position in the table affects their funding. so, they try to get as many kids as possible into the a-c bracket. even going so far as to 'discourage' kids who might be getting a d-grade or below from taking the exam. the other way to get everyone in the magic a-c bracket is to get them an 'easier' exam. and they have to buy these exam papers. so if you're a company selling 'easier' exams and the schools are looking for 'easier' exam papers, well, hey presto! the kids get the 'easier' exam papers. (1) - that's another scam the exam boards brought in to get more people falling into the grade a-c bracket, without the a* there'd only be 3 grades in that bracket rather than the 4 there are now)
if i remember correctly, you could do a forbid() that'd stop all the multitasking, or at least give your task the priority. there were some reasons for using it. though off the top of my head i can't think of any legitimate ones.
'Lost sales' (or money you haven't earned for whatever reason) IS NOT a cost!
A cost is money you've spent in the course of your business. Electricity, postage, they're costs. Money you didn't earn isn't.
And wouldn't £1.1 billion is lost sales equate to approx 100 million albums that weren't sold? this page says there were only 150 million albums sold in the uk in 2006. And this page says that the total uk music sales only came to £1.7 billion (retail, for physical and digital).
actually, i've seen and used a glass hammer. it was for some panel beating type stuff.
so they get an immediate disconnect with a $500 fee on the second dmca? but what if the 1st one was bogus/wrong/malicious?
and by copying the management of those above you, you're stuck in a cycle where any new ideas get rejected because they're not those of the people above you. your doomed to repeat the failings of those who went before you. now that's the real world.
I read in the paper (think it was the Metro on the bus, but I'm not totally sure) that they're going to to have pre-recorded messages for these camera's ('pick up your litter', 'stop pissing in that bush', etc) and that they're going to get children to record these messages as they believe that adults will be more shamed into behaving properly if they are being admonished by a child.
I've been wondering about that. For the past couple of weeks some (insert random collection of expletives) spammers have been sending out their crap with one of my domains as the sender and reply addresses, so since then i've been dealing with mailservers bouncing the spam back to me to tell me it's spam. It's mailservers bouncing spam that's contributing to this too. I'm probably getting about 30 or 40 a day of these coming back. So, admin folk, stop bouncing the spam back. Just 'cos it's got my address on it doesn't mean I've sent it.