There is a world of difference between WalMart asking the movie companies to produce a sanitized version for them, and the movie/music companies agreeing, and people chopping up the movie despite the movie studios objection.
Not really, and not at all in the context of the court case. The case was brought by the directors guild. The same people whose names are on the censored* film when either the movie studio or
the 3rd party edits them. If the product of the 3rd party sullies the reputations of the DGA members, then so does the product of the movie studios when they cut the same parts out.
...we all have the right to insist that people not slice and dice our copyrighted works,...
Yes, at least in the US, we have the "right" of free speech, and you are free to insist whatever you want. However, "fair use" tells me that I am free to slice up your comments (much as I have already done while replying) in the way I see fit.
The "insist" part of the directors is pablum. "Audiences can now be assured that the films they buy or rent are the vision of the filmmakers who made them and not the arbitrary choices of a third-party editor." Well, let's see. If I go to the CleanFlicks
website and see, as I do, in the top banner, "We remove all profanity, nudity, graphic violence, sexual content", and "Edited DVDs -- no offensive content", I'm think they've met any requirement to
notify me that what I'm buying isn't the porn^H^H^H^Hartistic
product of the Hollywood elite.
Now, let's discuss the notification to buyers who put a CD into
their computer CD player and get a rootkit installed without their consent, shall we?
...or you may (correctly) observe there's some low levels of hypocrisy here on the movie studios part.
Since the suit was brought by the directors, no. I don't know if the studio's funded the case, but just like the movies, the director's names are on the suit.
You are right in that the movie studios should be backing the censors*. It's more sales for them, more eyeballs. It's nothing that the TV
networks don't do on a daily basis -- editing for "content" and length, etc -- in a much less artistically friendly way.
* it isn't censorship -- you aren't forced to buy the edited product and the government isn't forcing it to be edited.
But if a company doesn't listen to the needs of a particular community, what's to stop the consumer from going to a company that does?
A) The lack of anyone else to get the same service from. Where I live, it's Comcast or outside antenna. (Or satellite, which carries local broadcast TV only AT BEST and only if you get
the higher priced hardware and service. Otherwise you get only the national feeds of "cable" channels.)
B) The fact that what people ORDER as service doesn't always
reflect the community needs. The community doesn't really NEED 24 hour a day movie and shopping channels. In fact, whilst the shopper enjoys buying from HSN, they would benefit the community more by buying the same crap locally.
There are many examples of where customer wants and community needs differ radically. E.g., Amber Alerts. EAS Tests. Digital cable.
One big example is PEG access. Nobody would cancel cable if
they dropped PEG tomorrow, but PEG access fills a niche need for each community. In ours, it allows anyone with cable to monitor the nonsense spewing from our elected official's mouths at council meetings without having to take the afternoon off work (they have a noon meeting). That's a Good
Thing and necessary for an educated electorate, but not
something too many cable customers worry about.
Right now it's a long and slow process to get the right to give people television service.
It isn't a "right" to provide television service.
There are a lot of monopolies as a result-
That is not why there are a lot of "monopolies". In fact, there are very few true monopoly situations in cable service. All of the franchises I've ever been acquainted with have been non-exclusive. All it takes for a competitor to come to town in cable is to negotiate their own franchise -- and they
have a good starting point with the existing franchise.
The reason there is an effective monopoly is the cost of building a system. Once the lawyers get done with the franchise, they've got to dump tons of money into a town to reach a competitive level.
Some people may not want any local channels, and will be able to pay less. Some may be willing to pay more for more local channels than the local franchises currently require.
I think you will find the latter category extremely limited, and basing a business plan on them will be fatal from the start. Further, you will be hard pressed to find unique programming for those channels you create as extras. You can give the fire department its own channel, but will they program anything? Will the local high school do anything more than put up a CG with listings of the lunch entree's?
If you let more companies into the market,
Local control of cable franchises does not prevent companies from coming into the market, nor does state control allow more entry. The prime preventer of entry into a market is building infrastructure.
Cell competition is the way it is because even though the cell company has to get FCC licenses, all it takes for infrastructure is basically to find half a dozen private landowners who will lease them cell tower space. Cable competition requires city franchising and then hanging cables -- the latter is much more expensive and requires a large capital investment in equipment -- all before the first customer can be served. And if the investment requires a fee
structure higher than the existing service, they're unlikely to reach any critical mass and they'll go bankrupt.
And that forces the existing providers to lower their prices or improve their service, or everyone will leave their service.
That's the theory, isn't it? But DishNetwork/DirectTV are competitors to cable, and neither Dish/Direct nor cable are lowering rates. In fact, I left Dish because they gave me just two weeks notice of a massive rate increase, and not once has cable said "hey -- we're cutting prices...".
In fact, our local cable company doesn't even obey the franchise law that says they must give 30 days written notice of rate increases. Competition? Hmmm.....
There's nothing to stop a state from requiring the same number of local channels or low-income pricing.
The state has no vested interest in providing local channels or low-income pricing. The pressures for such are entirely local-level, as are the needs.
For example, how many "local channels" should a system in a town of
5000 (which has no video equipment of its own to produce any local programming) have, compared to a town of 50,000 which televises city council meetings ad nauseum* and has a major university and large community college, both producing video? *the televising is good; it's the nonsense coming out of the mouths of the council that causes nausea.
Local municipalities are represented in state government after all.
I'm sorry, but what country do you live in? Certainly not the US. It is not the job of any state government to represent "local municipalities" in contract negotiations with corporate America.
If a cable TV company wants to use city resources to make a profit, they need to deal with the city itself. Period. The state has no right to usurp the city resources for corporate financial gain.
I haven't seen many complaints from Texas after they passed state-wide franchising legislation. Obviously there are complaints from cable companies already established, but they have the most to lose.
Wrong wrong wrong. The city that no longer can require services specific for its community needs loses the most. The people who live in a city that can no longer demand technical improvements lose even more. The only reason our city got fibered is because
the city demanded it in the franchise. A franchise which, by the
way, any company that wants to compete can sign onto and compete to its heart's content. It's non-exclusive.
I just dealt with T-Mobile service on the weekend, and I have GOT to
report what happened. Great service? hmmm...
Many years ago
when I got my current phone I made sure that the system was set so that caller id was withheld unless I specifically released it for a call. On Saturday, I learned that my caller-id info was being sent out. I called
customer support. "No problem", she said, she set the flag that said no caller-id sent.
I tested it. Not only was caller ID being sent, the menu item on the phone that says "restrict caller id" no longer worked.
I called customer service again. "Your phone is very old", she said. (Yes, several years.) "It's not a T-Mobile-branded phone", she said. (Bought from a T-Mobile
dealer, and it says "Voicestream" right on it -- which is who T-Mobile bought out.) "It has probably worn out." HuH? "Yes, just like a toaster, when you use it alot, it wears out." So she's telling me that
because I had "restrict caller id" set as the default for so many years, my phone just "wore out" and started sending it again. (The default setting is in THEIR computer, not the phone.)
Vonage is no better. I ordered it last week, and got assigned a phone number. I decided I'd call it to see what happens. Someone answered. Not me. My "device" hasn't even arrived yet.
The fourth customer service person I spoke to (number one forwarded me to sales, number two forwarded me to customer support, number three hung up on me after I was on hold for half an hour, and then number four ---) asked me what "device" I was using and I said none. He asked
if it had arrived and I said "no". He then asked me if I had plugged it into my network. "The device that hasn't arrived yet, is that the
one you are asking me if I plugged in?", I asked him.
I thought it was an obvious problem if someone else answers a phone when the hardware for that phone line has not yet been installed, but it was pulling teeth to get Vonage to understand what was wrong. "Are you the only one there?" Well, I'm the only one HERE, but I have no idea how many people are THERE where the phone was answered.
They asked me for a contact number -- and I told them, "when you get
it working, you can call me at...". They promised a problem resolution in 48 hours -- midnight tonight. I'm not holding my breath.
aircraft are generally not equipped with power outlets,
There is a standard power jack for aircraft use, and at one point United made a point of advertising that all (but two) of its 757 fleet
had power outlets at each seat in first or business class.
I've also seen them in A320's, I think, and I recall that Delta had
them in some of their aircraft.
All I know is every time I fly and I DO carry my inflight adapter as
carryon, they don't have power, and every time I fly and I DO NOT
carry it, they do.
The fact that this guy/gal is saying the T-Mobile reps hung up is what makes me skeptical of this whole story.
I don't doubt it for a second. I, too, am a T-Mobile customer. They have been trained, evidently, that the computer is always right and
the customer is always wrong. Period.
I was in Australia for a week. One day during that week, according to T-Mobile,
I was the recipient of 75 calls. Each call was unanswered but charged a
full minute at the going overseas rate. Since the call was unanswered, it was forwarded to my voice mail back in the US, also one minute, and also at the going overseas rate. That was about $2 per minute, about $300 total.
My phone did not ring once. This was not a case of just missing the vibration. During the time these calls were made, my phone was on the charger, and my phone ignores silent settings and just rings anyway when on charger. It did not ring once. Nor did I get a "75 missed calls" message on the phone, nor did I get 75 voice mails.
T-Mobile told me 1) Telstra's computer says the calls were made, they were made,
and 2) if I wanted to avoid this in the future, shut my phone off. Even though the "service agent" almost broke down once and almost admitted that something was obviously wrong, T-Mobile policy was that I was responsible for paying for the calls I never got. After a VERY LONG time discussing this with them, they finally issued a "courtesy"
refund of the charges. They were admitting no error, and this was a
"one time" deal. They finally realized that by keeping me as a customer they would make much more than the $300 they would have gotten as a final payment at account closing.
Over the years, T-Mobile's service has gone from bad to good to bad to good several times. If they are "JD Powers" winners of anything, then that says more about JD Powers being meaningless than about T-Mobile being good.
The only advice I have for the OP is to forward the issue to your state's PUC and Attorney General. And tell T-Mobile that you are doing
that.
Some models do a much better job than others, but there are very few facts.
There are a lot of facts. It is how one interprets those facts that
is the problem.
For example.
It is a fact that a gas bubble trapped in arctic
ice at a certain depth contained 3.4% carbon dioxide. (That's an example of a fact, not necessarily true.)
It is a fact that ice in that region acreted at a rate of 0.3 m/year over the last year. (It was measured.)
It is not a fact that the age of the bubble is depth/0.3 years. That requires an assumption that the
acretion rate was constant, and is not itself a fact.
It is likewise not a fact that the atmosphere at the time the bubble was captured (whenever that was) was 3.4% carbon dioxide. It requires an assumption that there is no mechanism that would result in a change of concentration of various gases trapped in ice.
Similarly:
It is a fact that the average temperature of a certain region of land is X degrees today. That was measured.
It is a fact that the average temperature of the same piece of land last year was Y degrees. It, too, was measured.
It is not a fact that the temperature of that same piece of land was Z degrees four hundred years ago. A) there was no measurement taken then, and B) the estimates are based on measurements of other things and then assumptions about how they relate to temperature. It is those assumtions that changes Z from a fact into a theory.
It is not a fact that the piece of land is X-Y degrees warmer that it used to be, even though both X and Y are facts. There is no knowledge that the means of measuring X and Y were the same, so one or the other or both may have a deterministic error. For example, satellite temperature measurements are regularly refined to take into account various factors that had not been previously. The change in how the data were processed may result in a bogus "increase" in temperature (or a similar bogus "decrease".)
Yes, there are lots of facts. It is important to differentiate between
what is a fact and what is a theory. "Global warming" and "anthropogenically caused global warming" are both theories.
I prefer the old/existing.
I see no triangles on the "sections". I see the left menu bar now taking up more space, so that by the time you reach the articles after the left and right frames, the page is half whitespace with the articles squeezed into the middle.
From what others seem to be saying, the new also doesn't gracefully degrade when javascript or colors or fonts are turned off.
Re:Never more than one key at a time?
on
Vim 7 Released
·
· Score: 1
I know most dinossaurs know this, but as a pre-historical information, before vi there was "ed",
And before either was 'teco'.
I remember hearing that vi was programmed as a teco macro.
I'll bite. A little enlightenment on vim can't hurt.
Yes. I tried finding this stuff in the manuals, but no luck.
Well, almost every text editor and word processor in the world has this.
I don't use almost every text editor and word processor. I use 'vi'. My fingers learned a long time ago that to undo the accidental 'u' (right next to 'i' for insert) one just does another 'u'. With 'vim', this leaves you TWO steps back.
set viminfo='0 in.vimrc.
THAT is certainly not intuitive, but it does solve the "start somewhere in the middle of the file" problem. Thanks.
vim -v
Nope. Just tried the undo's, and it doesn't change the behaviour. The winner is phraktyl (92649) with "set compatible".
The disadvantage to such an effecient input system is when the cat jumps on your keyboard, you can have hours of work erased in Vi.
You can have hours of work erased just by forgetting that vim has
multi-level "undo", and that instead of being able to undo the undo you just accidentally undid, you'll be undoing something else, maybe even an entire paragraph somewhere else in the file.
Plus, if you count on being able to know where you will start editing a file, vim can be a real surprise when it drops you
somewhere into the middle of a file instead of row 1 column 1.
If you've not edited that file for months, it is ridiculous for
vim to assume that you want to go back to the last place you were. (You can remove this "feature" by making an unwritable.vimrc, I've found. It can't remember where you were in a file, so you start at the beginning.)
And colorized editing!?! What a treat for text to show up as dark blue on black when you've set your xterm colors to white on
black.
Yes, I appreciate the work put into vim. I'd appreciate a "strict vi mode" command to tell vim not to do all the extra stuff that gets in the way of fingers that learned vi a long time ago.
The requirements for getting a drivers's license means that it is
hardly an identity card of any kind. The only thing it demonstrates is that someone using the name on the front of the card demonstrated the requisite knowledge and skills to operate a motor vehicle at one point in his life.
It certainly has nothing to do with citizenship or authorization
for citizenship-based rights, and anyone who uses it as an ID is
simply fooling themselves.
Aren't I already paying for the content in the form of my cable bill?
Not a significant amount of the cost. TLC, etc are still a lot
cheaper to get because they have national ad revenues. They profit because they keep their prices to the cableco's low enough that they get carried a lot.
What the cable companies do pay to the satellite channels they
recoup by selling local commercials. Have you ever wondered how a national satellite channel carries adverts for local companies?
It's called a "local avail", as in "locally available commercial slot", and cableco's offset the cost of the satellite feed by selling ads to local businesses. You can spot a local-avail in
many cases (at least on Comcast) because the switching hardware
screws up and changes a few seconds late. You see a few seconds of the national ad, then the local avail, and get back into the show a few seconds late.
Last night, we got "Do you have itchy burning cracked skin on
your feet? Well, I may not be a normal soccer mom because I go
to Oil Can Henry's..."
It can sit and spin at the menu for three hours, I don't care, as long as it's ready to go when I finally get around to turning the TV and stereo on.
I bought a $45 DVD player hoping to use it to record to tape a DVD
that mencoder wouldn't encode properly. That player is the only reason why I know about not being able to skip the FBI/copyright/mandatory video lead-ins to modern DVDs.
It also doesn't "spin at the menu" for anything near three hours. If you don't choose anything from the menu for a certain amount of time, it just starts playing the movie.
As for a media device that forces me to watch ads: it's broken.
I don't need to tell the taker-backer at the store that it failed my personal hi-pot test. It's nice to own a tesla coil.
It is when the correct price is the club card price.
Wow. Someone who can define "the correct price" for every item being sold. I've never met anyone like that before.
So, if one store in town charges a dime more than the "club price" at another store for something to everyone who shops there, they are "ripping people off" by not charging "the correct price"?
Your argument is marred by the existance of certain facts. The prime fact is that nobody is forced to divulge anything to anyone to get a discount card.
IF a store said "fill out this form and after we do a credit check we'll mail you the discount card", you'd have a point. They don't. At every store I've ever been to with these cards, they will happily hand you a card to use on the current purchase, and I've even had checkers swipe their own cards so I get the discount even after I've said I don't want a card of my own.
That almost looks to me like I'm being FORCED to pay the club price for things! Hey, force me to take a discount.
That's fine by me. Why is it a problem for you?
Another fact that you've overlooked is that the existance of the Club cards is not solely for gathering specific data about specific shoppers. They serve two other purposes. 1) Generic demographics are still valuable. "A shopper who buys product X also buys product Y" could be valuable. 2) A shopper who thinks he is "sticking it to the man" by using an 'anonymous' discount card is more likely to shop at that store and more likely to buy more things when he does.
This is even less of an issue than the old Radio Shak practice of demanding your name for a sale. The checker who just rang you up won't see the fake data you put on the form, so she'll have no idea your name is fake when you write down "Frank Furter".
So it's ok for the store to rip certain people off. That about right?
Let's see: you walk up to a product display, and the price tag says "$2.98 or 2/$4 with a Club Card". You pick
up the item and put it in your cart. When you get to the checkout, you are asked for your club card. You say "No got". They ask if you want one, you make the decision to say "No thanks".
Tell me again how this is "ripping" someone off. You choose not to participate in the "club", you choose to pay the higher price. Or go somewhere else. That about right?
Are you saying that students don't pay the salaries of the professors? You'd be an imbecile to deny it.
In the College where I work, the students do not pay one single dime towards the professor's salaries. Professors are paid either directly through grants they receive or by the college from overhead taken from the grants other people receive. This is true for most of the colleges at this University.
For the "liberal arts" that don't have grants, the salaries are paid by the state from tax dollars. The students pay a very small part of the cost of their education.
The "broadband over power line" concept will kill shortwave.
Already existing broadband has pretty much caused shortwave broadcasters to start committing suicide. That's because they've forgotten the reason for their existance.
Shortwave broadcasting isn't supposed to be for distributing CD-quality music, it's supposed to be for distributing information over long distances to places that either don't have local information outlets or have restricted outlets. Analog works JUST FINE for that.
DRM (the current shortwave digital standard) is suicide for shortwave broadcasters as such, since it requires either a very expensive radio or a cheap radio and computer to decode. It explicitely excludes the very audience that most needs shortwave; remote locations in third-world countries where nobody can afford a computer but can afford a twenty dollar shortwave radio. The people who can afford DRM can also afford an internet connection and thus get the digital feed that way. And they are doing that.
And yes, BPL is a special case of shortwave killer, considering the interference it creates.
I do live comedy performances, and nothing ruins the flow of the show more than a cell phone going off in the middle of a scene.
If the vibration of my phone or pager on my belt "ruins the flow" of your comedy show, the problem is not the pager or phone, it is your skill as a comedian. Might I suggest you get a different job that you don't suck at?
I suspect that you are referring to micro-evolution here, but in the context of this discussion, it appears that you are claiming that macro evolution is testable. It is not.
Even were we able to find a lifeless planet and provide the correct mixture of primordial chemistry, and then wait the aeons that it would take for macro-evolution to produce the first multi-cellular organism, much less a human being, such an experiment would certainly not prove the hypothesis that macro-evolution is the source of life on this planet, only that it is one possible source.
Unfortunately, the term "evolution" is so broadly used today that it runs the gamut from simple single-cell mutations that improve a single species survival all the way through to "this is how life formed on earth." This results in one side saying "evolution has been proven and is testable" and the other saying it hasn't.
How little credit do you give the scientific community that you don't trust it to figure out what is falsifiable and what is not?
I'm IN the scientific community and I know that some of "us" cannot differentiate between falsifiable and not.
Just because YOU are not familiar with the science [and more fiction elided]...
I hate to stop you when you have lept so far to a conclusion, but I am quite familiar with the science etc etc etc...
If common decent is accurate, it inherently implies "macro-evolution".
First of all, I think you mean "descent". But this demonstrates the religion that you've allowed to enter your thinking. You've observed that some things are similar to others and are assuming the cause, which you then claim proves the cause. You ASSUME that the similarity is due to relation, and thus the similarity proves that relation.
Here's a simple counter-example. If you were to study the computer code I've produced over the last ten years, you would find a remarkable similarity. I comment in the same style, I create variable names in the same style, I do loops and branches in a similar way, even when using different languages. Were you to look at the history, you might be inclined to believe the the code could fit some "tree of descent". However, every bit of it
was designed by a creator. The fact that yesterday's code looks similar to last years is not due to some evolution taking place, it's due to a similarity of author.
Either common decent is true (and therefore macroevolution is true), or some alternative essentially indistinguishable from evolution.
I would suggest that a creation event is very distinguishable from macro evolution, just not to you because you weren't there to see the action. That's the point I made about science being bad at one-off events. It cannot prove how something happened, only disprove.
The only other known explanation would be to suggest a deceptive god that deliberately planted false evidence to deceive us into beleiving evolution was true.
I don't believe that God was bound by your rules in His actions, nor was He required to consider the erronious assumptions you would make when trying to understand His works. However, I find
it completely within His rights to create the Universe in a manner that would require faith and not serve only to prove His own existance to you.
Who the hell ever claimed to disprove "God created the universe"?
Every scientist who tries claiming that macro evolution is a fact proven by undeniable evidence. And we've already covered the bit about macro evolution not just being "things change" but that "things change and that's how we got here."
If you think some field of science is anti-God then the problem is you placing limitations upon God and how He could choose to do things.
Are you the same author who just previously commented on how the only other explanation for our existance than evolution was that God was being deliberately deceptive and false? Am I not expected to see the negative connotations to your words and see "anti-God" in there?
It was a single insertion event in the human-chimp common ancestor, and it was passed down into both of us.
That statement is so full of assumptions that it cannot help but be circular, and by it's nature religious. You've proven a common ancestor because there was a common ancestor passing DNA down. I use a standard terminology for copyright in my code; does the presence of that identical copyright text in two pieces of code prove that there was a common ancestor from whom both inherited the text, or is it just possible that there was a common creator who wrote the same thing twice?
You mean like forensic science, when they examine the evidence left behind by events to prove beyond any reasonable how something happened in one specific way?
I've already covered this bit of misunderstanding of the criminal justice system. The prosecutor does not prove that someone did something, he only has to show beyond a reasonable doubt that it is likely, and in some cases, by emotion-bating the jury, he doesn't even have to go that far. In fact, it is precisely this lack of
You fail to note that, while evolution cannot be reproduced in one person's lifetime at the moment, there is solid evidence that it did, in fact, occur.
And that would be, exactly, what? No, a piece of fossil that could have appeared due to macro evolution is not proof that macro evolution actually produced it. Even in our modern courts of law, we do not "prove" someone did something, we show beyond a reasonable doubt that he is guilty of doing it.
The issue with macro evolution is not that it is a theory about how things COULD happen, it is presented as a theory about how things DID happen. And then, not so much as a theory but as fact. For example, your use of the phrase "in fact".
What you said is precisely why the big bang theory is not a widely accepted theory.
Really? Seems like a lot of people believe it for it to not be
called "widely accepted".
Just like intelligent design, and unlike evolution, there is no proof of it. Thank you for proving my point.
I'd like to hear your proof that we are here due to macro evolution. Just what facts allow you to differentiate between
creation and evolution, at the level of "proof"?
Yes, I will accept that you have a theory that it happened a certian way, and that you might even have 'evidence' that fits your theory, but that's hardly proof.
Actually the big bang theory does make testable predictions,
No, if you assume the big bang, then there are predictions about other things that can be made. Those predictions, in themselves,
do not prove the big bang theory, any more than they prove the "God distributed the background radiation at 3.7K (or whatever the actual value is)" theory.
the evidence is piling up in support.
The main value of the scientific method is in its ability to disprove. Evidence does not support theories, it can only "not disprove" them. Evidence only supports a theory to the extent that all other theories might be dismissed as incorrect, and then only until a new theory that also fits the "evidence" comes about.
Likewise to test the big bang theory one does not need to create a big bang.
Thank goodness for that, because even were one able to create a big bang, it would do nothing to prove that the current universe came about as the result of one. This is a common misconception, that showing that something CAN happen a certain
way is proof that it DID happen that way. The "Amazing" Randi takes great pride in duplicating alleged psychic phenomenon using slight of hand and other trickery, pretending that by doing something one way he's shown it cannot be done another.
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Not really, and not at all in the context of the court case. The case was brought by the directors guild. The same people whose names are on the censored* film when either the movie studio or the 3rd party edits them. If the product of the 3rd party sullies the reputations of the DGA members, then so does the product of the movie studios when they cut the same parts out.
Yes, at least in the US, we have the "right" of free speech, and you are free to insist whatever you want. However, "fair use" tells me that I am free to slice up your comments (much as I have already done while replying) in the way I see fit.
The "insist" part of the directors is pablum. "Audiences can now be assured that the films they buy or rent are the vision of the filmmakers who made them and not the arbitrary choices of a third-party editor." Well, let's see. If I go to the CleanFlicks website and see, as I do, in the top banner, "We remove all profanity, nudity, graphic violence, sexual content", and "Edited DVDs -- no offensive content", I'm think they've met any requirement to notify me that what I'm buying isn't the porn^H^H^H^Hartistic product of the Hollywood elite.
Now, let's discuss the notification to buyers who put a CD into their computer CD player and get a rootkit installed without their consent, shall we?
Since the suit was brought by the directors, no. I don't know if the studio's funded the case, but just like the movies, the director's names are on the suit.
You are right in that the movie studios should be backing the censors*. It's more sales for them, more eyeballs. It's nothing that the TV networks don't do on a daily basis -- editing for "content" and length, etc -- in a much less artistically friendly way.
* it isn't censorship -- you aren't forced to buy the edited product and the government isn't forcing it to be edited.
A) The lack of anyone else to get the same service from. Where I live, it's Comcast or outside antenna. (Or satellite, which carries local broadcast TV only AT BEST and only if you get the higher priced hardware and service. Otherwise you get only the national feeds of "cable" channels.)
B) The fact that what people ORDER as service doesn't always reflect the community needs. The community doesn't really NEED 24 hour a day movie and shopping channels. In fact, whilst the shopper enjoys buying from HSN, they would benefit the community more by buying the same crap locally.
There are many examples of where customer wants and community needs differ radically. E.g., Amber Alerts. EAS Tests. Digital cable.
One big example is PEG access. Nobody would cancel cable if they dropped PEG tomorrow, but PEG access fills a niche need for each community. In ours, it allows anyone with cable to monitor the nonsense spewing from our elected official's mouths at council meetings without having to take the afternoon off work (they have a noon meeting). That's a Good Thing and necessary for an educated electorate, but not something too many cable customers worry about.
Right now it's a long and slow process to get the right to give people television service.
It isn't a "right" to provide television service.
There are a lot of monopolies as a result-
That is not why there are a lot of "monopolies". In fact, there are very few true monopoly situations in cable service. All of the franchises I've ever been acquainted with have been non-exclusive. All it takes for a competitor to come to town in cable is to negotiate their own franchise -- and they have a good starting point with the existing franchise.
The reason there is an effective monopoly is the cost of building a system. Once the lawyers get done with the franchise, they've got to dump tons of money into a town to reach a competitive level.
Some people may not want any local channels, and will be able to pay less. Some may be willing to pay more for more local channels than the local franchises currently require.
I think you will find the latter category extremely limited, and basing a business plan on them will be fatal from the start. Further, you will be hard pressed to find unique programming for those channels you create as extras. You can give the fire department its own channel, but will they program anything? Will the local high school do anything more than put up a CG with listings of the lunch entree's?
If you let more companies into the market,
Local control of cable franchises does not prevent companies from coming into the market, nor does state control allow more entry. The prime preventer of entry into a market is building infrastructure.
Cell competition is the way it is because even though the cell company has to get FCC licenses, all it takes for infrastructure is basically to find half a dozen private landowners who will lease them cell tower space. Cable competition requires city franchising and then hanging cables -- the latter is much more expensive and requires a large capital investment in equipment -- all before the first customer can be served. And if the investment requires a fee structure higher than the existing service, they're unlikely to reach any critical mass and they'll go bankrupt.
And that forces the existing providers to lower their prices or improve their service, or everyone will leave their service.
That's the theory, isn't it? But DishNetwork/DirectTV are competitors to cable, and neither Dish/Direct nor cable are lowering rates. In fact, I left Dish because they gave me just two weeks notice of a massive rate increase, and not once has cable said "hey -- we're cutting prices...". In fact, our local cable company doesn't even obey the franchise law that says they must give 30 days written notice of rate increases. Competition? Hmmm.....
The state has no vested interest in providing local channels or low-income pricing. The pressures for such are entirely local-level, as are the needs.
For example, how many "local channels" should a system in a town of 5000 (which has no video equipment of its own to produce any local programming) have, compared to a town of 50,000 which televises city council meetings ad nauseum* and has a major university and large community college, both producing video? *the televising is good; it's the nonsense coming out of the mouths of the council that causes nausea.
Local municipalities are represented in state government after all.
I'm sorry, but what country do you live in? Certainly not the US. It is not the job of any state government to represent "local municipalities" in contract negotiations with corporate America.
If a cable TV company wants to use city resources to make a profit, they need to deal with the city itself. Period. The state has no right to usurp the city resources for corporate financial gain.
I haven't seen many complaints from Texas after they passed state-wide franchising legislation. Obviously there are complaints from cable companies already established, but they have the most to lose.
Wrong wrong wrong. The city that no longer can require services specific for its community needs loses the most. The people who live in a city that can no longer demand technical improvements lose even more. The only reason our city got fibered is because the city demanded it in the franchise. A franchise which, by the way, any company that wants to compete can sign onto and compete to its heart's content. It's non-exclusive.
Many years ago when I got my current phone I made sure that the system was set so that caller id was withheld unless I specifically released it for a call. On Saturday, I learned that my caller-id info was being sent out. I called customer support. "No problem", she said, she set the flag that said no caller-id sent.
I tested it. Not only was caller ID being sent, the menu item on the phone that says "restrict caller id" no longer worked.
I called customer service again. "Your phone is very old", she said. (Yes, several years.) "It's not a T-Mobile-branded phone", she said. (Bought from a T-Mobile dealer, and it says "Voicestream" right on it -- which is who T-Mobile bought out.) "It has probably worn out." HuH? "Yes, just like a toaster, when you use it alot, it wears out." So she's telling me that because I had "restrict caller id" set as the default for so many years, my phone just "wore out" and started sending it again. (The default setting is in THEIR computer, not the phone.)
Vonage is no better. I ordered it last week, and got assigned a phone number. I decided I'd call it to see what happens. Someone answered. Not me. My "device" hasn't even arrived yet.
The fourth customer service person I spoke to (number one forwarded me to sales, number two forwarded me to customer support, number three hung up on me after I was on hold for half an hour, and then number four ---) asked me what "device" I was using and I said none. He asked if it had arrived and I said "no". He then asked me if I had plugged it into my network. "The device that hasn't arrived yet, is that the one you are asking me if I plugged in?", I asked him.
I thought it was an obvious problem if someone else answers a phone when the hardware for that phone line has not yet been installed, but it was pulling teeth to get Vonage to understand what was wrong. "Are you the only one there?" Well, I'm the only one HERE, but I have no idea how many people are THERE where the phone was answered.
They asked me for a contact number -- and I told them, "when you get it working, you can call me at ...". They promised a problem resolution in 48 hours -- midnight tonight. I'm not holding my breath.
There is a standard power jack for aircraft use, and at one point United made a point of advertising that all (but two) of its 757 fleet had power outlets at each seat in first or business class.
I've also seen them in A320's, I think, and I recall that Delta had them in some of their aircraft.
All I know is every time I fly and I DO carry my inflight adapter as carryon, they don't have power, and every time I fly and I DO NOT carry it, they do.
The "VERY LONG" time consisted of several phone calls, and yes, they did hang up on me at least once.
I don't doubt it for a second. I, too, am a T-Mobile customer. They have been trained, evidently, that the computer is always right and the customer is always wrong. Period.
I was in Australia for a week. One day during that week, according to T-Mobile, I was the recipient of 75 calls. Each call was unanswered but charged a full minute at the going overseas rate. Since the call was unanswered, it was forwarded to my voice mail back in the US, also one minute, and also at the going overseas rate. That was about $2 per minute, about $300 total.
My phone did not ring once. This was not a case of just missing the vibration. During the time these calls were made, my phone was on the charger, and my phone ignores silent settings and just rings anyway when on charger. It did not ring once. Nor did I get a "75 missed calls" message on the phone, nor did I get 75 voice mails.
T-Mobile told me 1) Telstra's computer says the calls were made, they were made, and 2) if I wanted to avoid this in the future, shut my phone off. Even though the "service agent" almost broke down once and almost admitted that something was obviously wrong, T-Mobile policy was that I was responsible for paying for the calls I never got. After a VERY LONG time discussing this with them, they finally issued a "courtesy" refund of the charges. They were admitting no error, and this was a "one time" deal. They finally realized that by keeping me as a customer they would make much more than the $300 they would have gotten as a final payment at account closing.
Over the years, T-Mobile's service has gone from bad to good to bad to good several times. If they are "JD Powers" winners of anything, then that says more about JD Powers being meaningless than about T-Mobile being good.
The only advice I have for the OP is to forward the issue to your state's PUC and Attorney General. And tell T-Mobile that you are doing that.
There are a lot of facts. It is how one interprets those facts that is the problem.
For example.
- It is a fact that a gas bubble trapped in arctic
ice at a certain depth contained 3.4% carbon dioxide. (That's an example of a fact, not necessarily true.)
- It is a fact that ice in that region acreted at a rate of 0.3 m/year over the last year. (It was measured.)
- It is not a fact that the age of the bubble is depth/0.3 years. That requires an assumption that the
acretion rate was constant, and is not itself a fact.
- It is likewise not a fact that the atmosphere at the time the bubble was captured (whenever that was) was 3.4% carbon dioxide. It requires an assumption that there is no mechanism that would result in a change of concentration of various gases trapped in ice.
Similarly:- It is a fact that the average temperature of a certain region of land is X degrees today. That was measured.
- It is a fact that the average temperature of the same piece of land last year was Y degrees. It, too, was measured.
- It is not a fact that the temperature of that same piece of land was Z degrees four hundred years ago. A) there was no measurement taken then, and B) the estimates are based on measurements of other things and then assumptions about how they relate to temperature. It is those assumtions that changes Z from a fact into a theory.
- It is not a fact that the piece of land is X-Y degrees warmer that it used to be, even though both X and Y are facts. There is no knowledge that the means of measuring X and Y were the same, so one or the other or both may have a deterministic error. For example, satellite temperature measurements are regularly refined to take into account various factors that had not been previously. The change in how the data were processed may result in a bogus "increase" in temperature (or a similar bogus "decrease".)
Yes, there are lots of facts. It is important to differentiate between what is a fact and what is a theory. "Global warming" and "anthropogenically caused global warming" are both theories.I prefer the old/existing. I see no triangles on the "sections". I see the left menu bar now taking up more space, so that by the time you reach the articles after the left and right frames, the page is half whitespace with the articles squeezed into the middle. From what others seem to be saying, the new also doesn't gracefully degrade when javascript or colors or fonts are turned off.
And before either was 'teco'.
I remember hearing that vi was programmed as a teco macro.
Yes. I tried finding this stuff in the manuals, but no luck.
Well, almost every text editor and word processor in the world has this.
I don't use almost every text editor and word processor. I use 'vi'. My fingers learned a long time ago that to undo the accidental 'u' (right next to 'i' for insert) one just does another 'u'. With 'vim', this leaves you TWO steps back.
set viminfo='0 in .vimrc.
THAT is certainly not intuitive, but it does solve the "start somewhere in the middle of the file" problem. Thanks.
vim -v
Nope. Just tried the undo's, and it doesn't change the behaviour. The winner is phraktyl (92649) with "set compatible".
Thanks to both of you for the solutions.
You can have hours of work erased just by forgetting that vim has multi-level "undo", and that instead of being able to undo the undo you just accidentally undid, you'll be undoing something else, maybe even an entire paragraph somewhere else in the file.
Plus, if you count on being able to know where you will start editing a file, vim can be a real surprise when it drops you somewhere into the middle of a file instead of row 1 column 1. If you've not edited that file for months, it is ridiculous for vim to assume that you want to go back to the last place you were. (You can remove this "feature" by making an unwritable .vimrc, I've found. It can't remember where you were in a file, so you start at the beginning.)
And colorized editing!?! What a treat for text to show up as dark blue on black when you've set your xterm colors to white on black.
Yes, I appreciate the work put into vim. I'd appreciate a "strict vi mode" command to tell vim not to do all the extra stuff that gets in the way of fingers that learned vi a long time ago.
The requirements for getting a drivers's license means that it is hardly an identity card of any kind. The only thing it demonstrates is that someone using the name on the front of the card demonstrated the requisite knowledge and skills to operate a motor vehicle at one point in his life.
It certainly has nothing to do with citizenship or authorization for citizenship-based rights, and anyone who uses it as an ID is simply fooling themselves.
Not a significant amount of the cost. TLC, etc are still a lot cheaper to get because they have national ad revenues. They profit because they keep their prices to the cableco's low enough that they get carried a lot.
What the cable companies do pay to the satellite channels they recoup by selling local commercials. Have you ever wondered how a national satellite channel carries adverts for local companies?
It's called a "local avail", as in "locally available commercial slot", and cableco's offset the cost of the satellite feed by selling ads to local businesses. You can spot a local-avail in many cases (at least on Comcast) because the switching hardware screws up and changes a few seconds late. You see a few seconds of the national ad, then the local avail, and get back into the show a few seconds late.
Last night, we got "Do you have itchy burning cracked skin on your feet? Well, I may not be a normal soccer mom because I go to Oil Can Henry's ..."
I bought a $45 DVD player hoping to use it to record to tape a DVD that mencoder wouldn't encode properly. That player is the only reason why I know about not being able to skip the FBI/copyright/mandatory video lead-ins to modern DVDs.
It also doesn't "spin at the menu" for anything near three hours. If you don't choose anything from the menu for a certain amount of time, it just starts playing the movie.
As for a media device that forces me to watch ads: it's broken. I don't need to tell the taker-backer at the store that it failed my personal hi-pot test. It's nice to own a tesla coil.
Wow. Someone who can define "the correct price" for every item being sold. I've never met anyone like that before.
So, if one store in town charges a dime more than the "club price" at another store for something to everyone who shops there, they are "ripping people off" by not charging "the correct price"?
Your argument is marred by the existance of certain facts. The prime fact is that nobody is forced to divulge anything to anyone to get a discount card.
IF a store said "fill out this form and after we do a credit check we'll mail you the discount card", you'd have a point. They don't. At every store I've ever been to with these cards, they will happily hand you a card to use on the current purchase, and I've even had checkers swipe their own cards so I get the discount even after I've said I don't want a card of my own.
That almost looks to me like I'm being FORCED to pay the club price for things! Hey, force me to take a discount. That's fine by me. Why is it a problem for you?
Another fact that you've overlooked is that the existance of the Club cards is not solely for gathering specific data about specific shoppers. They serve two other purposes. 1) Generic demographics are still valuable. "A shopper who buys product X also buys product Y" could be valuable. 2) A shopper who thinks he is "sticking it to the man" by using an 'anonymous' discount card is more likely to shop at that store and more likely to buy more things when he does.
This is even less of an issue than the old Radio Shak practice of demanding your name for a sale. The checker who just rang you up won't see the fake data you put on the form, so she'll have no idea your name is fake when you write down "Frank Furter".
Let's see: you walk up to a product display, and the price tag says "$2.98 or 2/$4 with a Club Card". You pick up the item and put it in your cart. When you get to the checkout, you are asked for your club card. You say "No got". They ask if you want one, you make the decision to say "No thanks".
Tell me again how this is "ripping" someone off. You choose not to participate in the "club", you choose to pay the higher price. Or go somewhere else. That about right?
In the College where I work, the students do not pay one single dime towards the professor's salaries. Professors are paid either directly through grants they receive or by the college from overhead taken from the grants other people receive. This is true for most of the colleges at this University.
For the "liberal arts" that don't have grants, the salaries are paid by the state from tax dollars. The students pay a very small part of the cost of their education.
Yeah, I got stomped when I delayed a project because the NanoITX was "real soon now" ... VIA is vaporware until it's actually in my hands...
Already existing broadband has pretty much caused shortwave broadcasters to start committing suicide. That's because they've forgotten the reason for their existance.
Shortwave broadcasting isn't supposed to be for distributing CD-quality music, it's supposed to be for distributing information over long distances to places that either don't have local information outlets or have restricted outlets. Analog works JUST FINE for that.
DRM (the current shortwave digital standard) is suicide for shortwave broadcasters as such, since it requires either a very expensive radio or a cheap radio and computer to decode. It explicitely excludes the very audience that most needs shortwave; remote locations in third-world countries where nobody can afford a computer but can afford a twenty dollar shortwave radio. The people who can afford DRM can also afford an internet connection and thus get the digital feed that way. And they are doing that.
And yes, BPL is a special case of shortwave killer, considering the interference it creates.
If the vibration of my phone or pager on my belt "ruins the flow" of your comedy show, the problem is not the pager or phone, it is your skill as a comedian. Might I suggest you get a different job that you don't suck at?
I suspect that you are referring to micro-evolution here, but in the context of this discussion, it appears that you are claiming that macro evolution is testable. It is not.
Even were we able to find a lifeless planet and provide the correct mixture of primordial chemistry, and then wait the aeons that it would take for macro-evolution to produce the first multi-cellular organism, much less a human being, such an experiment would certainly not prove the hypothesis that macro-evolution is the source of life on this planet, only that it is one possible source.
Unfortunately, the term "evolution" is so broadly used today that it runs the gamut from simple single-cell mutations that improve a single species survival all the way through to "this is how life formed on earth." This results in one side saying "evolution has been proven and is testable" and the other saying it hasn't.
How little credit do you give the scientific community that you don't trust it to figure out what is falsifiable and what is not?
I'm IN the scientific community and I know that some of "us" cannot differentiate between falsifiable and not.
I hate to stop you when you have lept so far to a conclusion, but I am quite familiar with the science etc etc etc...
If common decent is accurate, it inherently implies "macro-evolution".
First of all, I think you mean "descent". But this demonstrates the religion that you've allowed to enter your thinking. You've observed that some things are similar to others and are assuming the cause, which you then claim proves the cause. You ASSUME that the similarity is due to relation, and thus the similarity proves that relation.
Here's a simple counter-example. If you were to study the computer code I've produced over the last ten years, you would find a remarkable similarity. I comment in the same style, I create variable names in the same style, I do loops and branches in a similar way, even when using different languages. Were you to look at the history, you might be inclined to believe the the code could fit some "tree of descent". However, every bit of it was designed by a creator. The fact that yesterday's code looks similar to last years is not due to some evolution taking place, it's due to a similarity of author.
Either common decent is true (and therefore macroevolution is true), or some alternative essentially indistinguishable from evolution.
I would suggest that a creation event is very distinguishable from macro evolution, just not to you because you weren't there to see the action. That's the point I made about science being bad at one-off events. It cannot prove how something happened, only disprove.
The only other known explanation would be to suggest a deceptive god that deliberately planted false evidence to deceive us into beleiving evolution was true.
I don't believe that God was bound by your rules in His actions, nor was He required to consider the erronious assumptions you would make when trying to understand His works. However, I find it completely within His rights to create the Universe in a manner that would require faith and not serve only to prove His own existance to you.
Who the hell ever claimed to disprove "God created the universe"?
Every scientist who tries claiming that macro evolution is a fact proven by undeniable evidence. And we've already covered the bit about macro evolution not just being "things change" but that "things change and that's how we got here."
If you think some field of science is anti-God then the problem is you placing limitations upon God and how He could choose to do things.
Are you the same author who just previously commented on how the only other explanation for our existance than evolution was that God was being deliberately deceptive and false? Am I not expected to see the negative connotations to your words and see "anti-God" in there?
It was a single insertion event in the human-chimp common ancestor, and it was passed down into both of us.
That statement is so full of assumptions that it cannot help but be circular, and by it's nature religious. You've proven a common ancestor because there was a common ancestor passing DNA down. I use a standard terminology for copyright in my code; does the presence of that identical copyright text in two pieces of code prove that there was a common ancestor from whom both inherited the text, or is it just possible that there was a common creator who wrote the same thing twice?
You mean like forensic science, when they examine the evidence left behind by events to prove beyond any reasonable how something happened in one specific way?
I've already covered this bit of misunderstanding of the criminal justice system. The prosecutor does not prove that someone did something, he only has to show beyond a reasonable doubt that it is likely, and in some cases, by emotion-bating the jury, he doesn't even have to go that far. In fact, it is precisely this lack of
And that would be, exactly, what? No, a piece of fossil that could have appeared due to macro evolution is not proof that macro evolution actually produced it. Even in our modern courts of law, we do not "prove" someone did something, we show beyond a reasonable doubt that he is guilty of doing it.
The issue with macro evolution is not that it is a theory about how things COULD happen, it is presented as a theory about how things DID happen. And then, not so much as a theory but as fact. For example, your use of the phrase "in fact".
What you said is precisely why the big bang theory is not a widely accepted theory.
Really? Seems like a lot of people believe it for it to not be called "widely accepted".
Just like intelligent design, and unlike evolution, there is no proof of it. Thank you for proving my point.
I'd like to hear your proof that we are here due to macro evolution. Just what facts allow you to differentiate between creation and evolution, at the level of "proof"?
Yes, I will accept that you have a theory that it happened a certian way, and that you might even have 'evidence' that fits your theory, but that's hardly proof.
No, if you assume the big bang, then there are predictions about other things that can be made. Those predictions, in themselves, do not prove the big bang theory, any more than they prove the "God distributed the background radiation at 3.7K (or whatever the actual value is)" theory.
the evidence is piling up in support.
The main value of the scientific method is in its ability to disprove. Evidence does not support theories, it can only "not disprove" them. Evidence only supports a theory to the extent that all other theories might be dismissed as incorrect, and then only until a new theory that also fits the "evidence" comes about.
Likewise to test the big bang theory one does not need to create a big bang.
Thank goodness for that, because even were one able to create a big bang, it would do nothing to prove that the current universe came about as the result of one. This is a common misconception, that showing that something CAN happen a certain way is proof that it DID happen that way. The "Amazing" Randi takes great pride in duplicating alleged psychic phenomenon using slight of hand and other trickery, pretending that by doing something one way he's shown it cannot be done another.