You're not a fucking robot--use your head and think when you spend money and believe it or not, you can control what you buy and how much, despite any unconscious impulses.
Nonsense. Almost everything you do is driven by unconscious impulses. Finding a mate, getting a better job etc are all driven by the same desires that have been running our lives since the cavemen days.
So, when you look at a package, does your mind go along the following lines: "oh, that might be what I want. Oh wait, the eyes of the person on the box picture look odd. Oh, I get it, they've made her eyes slightly bigger than normal, which is a common marketing technique as it provides a child-like look and people like children. I will not buy that brand as they are trying to trick me!".
Reason and self control are part of what sets us apart from animals.
No, you are thinking of cutlery.;-) In seriousness, I don't see humans as being all that different from animals. Animals have reason and self control, and it's not as if you can argue that humans are the most reasoned and self-controlled beings ever brought into existance. If you disagree, we could turn the topic of conversation to religion, politics and war...
Ridiculous logic, if you can call it that at all. You're simply assuming what you're arguing. "If my tiger-repelling rock doesn't work, why don't we see any tigers around here??"
No, it's not the same argument. I use the rock one myself quite often e.g. discussing current events such as terrorism, so I am completely familiar with the concept. And when Lisa first introduced us to it.
Businesses spend money with the sole purpose of ultimately getting more back. Return on Investment. Properly done commercials pay for themselves many times over. You cannot seriously sit there and suggest that they are ineffective, because all of the research suggests otherwise. Brand awareness is completely sub-concious. You will chose the brands you are familiar with, even if you only became aware of that brand through an advertisment. Television commericals are especially bad, they use mind-fuck techniques. Some of the things done on every show on US television are banned here in the UK as we don't like companies underhandedly manipulating people. This is not new ground and nothing I'm saying here is revolutionary.
Just because you are aware of the process, it doesn't make you immune. I'm as much their bitch as anyone else.
They can test them all they want. I'm living proof that ads don't have to have an effect on what you buy.
I call BS. OK, probably, you are like me and ads don't get you buying things you wouldn't normally buy. However, you have to eat, right? You drink the odd soda/fruit juice. Go to your kitchen and look through the brands. Ask yourself how many of them advertise and how many don't. Very few people I've asked to do this have found that they are not influenced.
Sorry, but I wouldn't have high expectations for Minimo. As another poster said, it's absolutely massive compared to the alternatives in the mobile world. The install is also several orders of magnitude larger, in a place where storage is limited. The microsoft Pocket PC platform essentially keeps apps running in the background when you are not using them; this is done to reduce startup time. Keeping minimo active just killed my phone, and it's a pretty decent spec. I can keep both Pocket IE and my regular mobile browser open with no ill effects.
The problem is that they have taken a desktop app and tried to reduce it for the mobile world. Bad idea, it's just not going to work. You really need to start from the ground up for current mobile tech. Resources are limited and you have to deal with that problem in any application.
Is it just me, or did anybody else consider the implications of living in Somalia?
Hey, it's not all bad. The cancer rates are really low and hardly anyone dies of that "old age" illness. Plus, Somalia is now one of the worlds pirate hotspots. And I mean real shiver-me-timbers, except this time it's high-caliber machine guns instead of cannons. Arrrr!
Somalia is fucked up right now, and it's in the top five of my "our leaders don't give a shit about 'democracy'" points to use. Some of the shit over there makes Saddam look like santa claus in comparison.
If anarchy means 'no rulers', then why do people insist that having eight different strongmen ruling with iron fists and trying to eliminate the other seven would be anarchy?
Most people who call themselves anarchists don't even know what it means. They are rebelling for the sake of rebelling, which in itself is totally conformist most of the time. From what I understand from some folks I know who do actually believe in this stuff, anarchists have no issue with local government. The idea is that a community is responsible for itself and there are no authority figures ordering them about. Sure, it's a pipe dream, but it's quite different to what most people believe about the subject. Most probably equate it with Vivian out of "The Young Ones".
The more and more we limit people's freedoms, the more similar we become to the sick visions of people like Osama bin Laden. They want a world in which people have few if any freedoms, and where no one may dare diagree with Islam.
So so so wrong, and the fact that you believe this is indicative about how bad things have gotten.
Osama doesn't care about your freedom. He doesn't care about your democracy. He is enacting revenge on country that have pissed him off in some way. In the case of the US, his initial beef was the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia, ironically there to support a non-free and non-democractic dictatorship, who are also US allies.
There's a reason they don't let you hear his words on TV. You might start asking awkard questions of your leaders if they did. Like "why are we supporting corrupt evil governments when it makes some not-so-nice people want to fly planes into our buildings?".
Everything passing through an ISP or other service provider (such as GMail) will be captured.
GMail uses HTTPS and POPS. Good luck on tracking that!! All the ISP will see is a) when you checked your mail and b) when you sent mail. The contents of the messages and the reciprients is private.
2005-12-15 13:17 123.123.123.123 Silence Of the Lambs
That's what a log file looks like. It's easier to fake than it is to get the real thing. Log files prove nothing and there complete lack of accountability and integrity makes them worthless as evidence. Any lawyer would tear "log file proof" apart with little effort.
Who are the people that got your IP?
The ISP providing that very same Internet service, I presume.
Em no. I'm presuming you perhaps don't know how the net works. Essentially, with any service, including p2p, the remote party needs your IP to do anything. Third-party companies are contracted by the media industry to do several things with the p2p networks, posing as random home users. One is poisoning, offering fake files to simply annoy and devalue the platform. The other is data gathering. This data can be used for many purposes, such as marketing (it's better than the musiuc charts) but it can also be used to lead to one of these extortion requests.
Once the company has a user they wish to target, they then contact the owner of that IP and request the details of the user that was using that IP at that particular time. ISPs generally keep this data, in fact in many countries it's a legal requirement.
The information gathered by the third party is not evidence. It's not even close. The best they can do is say that "John and I witnessed user XYZ download ABC on DEF date". Then it's my word against theirs.
Can you say "conflict of interest"?
Not without laughing at you, no.
Exsqueeze me? Sorry, I just pointed out how it's third party companies that are doing this work. Their continued contracting demands results. It's like traffic wardens on commission i.e. unacceptible.
Can you say "NOT police officers"
Uhm, where the heck do you think police officers get their evidence?
Via trained methods learned after hours of training, worked out via hundreds of years of police evolution. Police Offices are QUALIFIED to collect evidence. Through this qualification they are TRUSTED to be impartial. The court system is 100% reliant on this impartiality. The media companies are not and they have a conflict of interest in this case. Have you ever even seen a court room, let alone be in one? You seem to be arguing about stuff you don't know all that much about. Nothing the media companies have to offer constitutes proof or evidence in anyway. It is 100% fakable and a decent lawyer will have this "evidence" thrown out during the first morning of the case, leaving nothing but "his word against mine".
Now you're just talking nonsense, and demonstrating that you don't know anything at all about how due process, discovery, accountability, or any aspect at all of the legal system works.
I think we've established that that's your role here, yes? Read your exact sentance above. "Accountability", that's the keyword here, what's going here has none. "Due-process" is not a for-profit company sending out extortion letters. It is a complete bastardisation of the legal system, but what isn't these days?
Uh, you mean other than the fact that the plaintiffs have an IP address
Psst, wanna IP address? Here's one: 123.123.123.123. Want another? OK, how about 192.168.100.1?
An IP address is proof of NOTHING. Log files are not proof. Screen grabs are not proof. Who are the people that got your IP? A company working for the media company? Can you say "conflict of interest"? Can you say "NOT police officers" (or anyone else qualified to be handling legal evidence)?
Should I ever find myself in this situation, the court will be provided with "proof" of how the lead lawyer on their side downloads kiddie porn at 4:30 in the morning. I'll have log files and whatever. Finding someones IP is pretty straight forward.
Apple have got a lock-in scheme on the iPod and IMHO it is all a part of their plan.
The default encoding in iTunes is not mp3. A large majority of the iPod owners will rip their entire collection into the AAC format and from that point will be tied to Apple hardware. When they go to upgrade to another device, they will ask if it can play their existing media. And Apple get another sale as the user finds they have to get another iPod. And as they are very nice, they will have no real issue with that.
Sure, I know you can re-rip your music, but who wants to do that? People being people, they will have lent or sold the original media by then and it won't be an option for many. And sure, with iTunes music, you can burn to CD and re-rip, but we are talking about normal people here, not the "tech elite". Many of them struggle to get the music on in the first place (I've personally helped three clueless users with iPods [ + some other folks with other devices]), so that idea will be beyond them.
Trust me here: Apples outstanding success with the iPod will hold them in the number one slot for a very long time. Provided they don't fsck it all up and pull a Sony or something.
I've seen it listed on a few members-only BT sites (low profile, not going to link them, sorry!), so they should be publically available to you if you go looking.
If it is in fact a loaner (to be returned) then Taco is a freaking moron. Slashdot has enough eyeballs to dictate a keeper model. What, a $3,500 laptop (retail) vs how many thousand eyeballs, the majority of who are actually interested in this sort of thing? Hell, I didn't even know you could get gamer laptops and I'm seriously thinking about it for my next system. Taco, stop whoring yourself for such cheap tricks, you can do better!
You can leave it unmuted and just sit there taking it in. It won't kill you or even hurt you I promise.
Wrong. You will subconciously recognize the brands on your next shopping trip and YOU WILL be more likely to buy them. Given the choice between a brand you "know" and a complete unknown, you will go for the "known", even if your "knowledge" of that product is through commercials you never paid attention to. If adverts don't work, why are they so common and expensive?
Hell, they even test the ads at 2x and 4x normal speed, to ensure that the logo and possibly the message are intact.
the international version uses Pizza Hut, the US version Taco Bell. Since the same company owns the two "restaurants", and since most non-US countries don't have TB, it was a fairly simple choice for them.
The UK version uses Taco Bell, both the recorded-from-cable and DVD do. I think this was an oversight as the UK doesn't have Taco Bell at all and the joke went way over everyones head. It was years later when the internet arrived that I started seeing other references and figured out it was a fast food resteraunt. Shame we don't have them; Mexican food rocks!
I wouldn't mind if they cut down t.v. shows to 25 minutes with commercials. Yeah, it might be a bit weird having stuff start at odd times, but 2.5-3 minutes of commercials per 22.5 minute episodes would be just perfect.
Move to the UK then!;-) As an example, in a one hour show, you get the following: (times are approx)
Opening scene
Opening credits
12 minutes of the show
3 minute ad break
12 minutes of the show
3 minute ad break
12 minutes of the show
3 minute ad break
12 minutes of the show
Close credits
ad break
next show
Of course, the BBC doesn't show adverts, so when you watch (e.g.) Star Trek, it's only 45 minutes long.
It's funny, US TV has a particular style, brought about by your ad breaks. With different ad slots, this style is lost on us. There are millions of people who believe that that the whole minor-climax, pull to exterior show then small re-cap are actually part of modern television directing styles, when in fact they are actually your commercial book-ends!
um... did you see I, Robot? now THAT is hardcore product placement.
Actually, I'd argue that iRobot had commercials in it. I noticed that ALL of the product placement happens within specific blocks, right next to each other. Every now and then they take a break from the action to tell you all about cars, shoes and package delivery. Then no mention until 30 minutes later, at which all three products are seen again.
implies very dangerously some sort of 'moral equivalency' between the American revolutionaries and the Iraqi jihadis. While I recognize that no doubt SOME Iraqis are fighting for purely nationalist reasons, it's not their main motivation.
They are morally equivalent for the vast majority of the fighting, despite your leaders consistent efforts to label anyone fighting in Iraq as a 'terrorist'. Sure, some jihad folks have gone there, but they are in the minority. Most of the fighting is being by groups who either hate each other and always hated each other, or those who don't want to see their country ruled as a puppet state for the profit of others. In the case of the former, ironically it was the removal of Saddam that lit the fuse. He was the only one brutal enough to keep them in check. These guys aren't the ones attacking US troops all that much. The other, latter element are 100% patriotic and are in no way different from anyone defending their sovereignty, and that includes the US revolution. Whats going on in Iraq is kind like the US revolution AND the civil war going on at once, with a little terrorism dropped in and over-emphasized by your leaders anxious to cover up their mistakes. Remember, the second the public makes the connection that Iraq has nothing to do with the 'war on terror', they are out on a rail.
You math is assuming that no further civilian casualities would have resulted regardless of the response to Sept 11th.
How many deaths were there in the USA during the four years prior to 9-11? Even if a full on jihad had kicked off with multiple attacks, you'll never even get close. 9-11 was a fluke and nothing like it will likely happen again. Even the worst case scenarios such as dirty bombs or biological weapons would never come close. These weapons cause more psychological damage than real injury. In fact, numerous experts have said that a dirty bomb with a properly managed containment and cleanup would cause zero fatalities, beyond the initial blast.
The only way US terrorism would have claimed the 10,000 mark (let alone 30,000) would be if full scale war broke out within your borders.
I'd like to think some further terrorist attacks were prevented by waging war on terrorism - but mainly the actions in Afghanistan and the direct military actions on Al-Quada cells and similiar terrorist groups.
Sure, I can agree with that. However, I can assure you with near one hundred percent certainty that your actions in Iraq have incited more hatred and terrorist-inspiring currency than any possible gain obtained via removing Saddam from power.
Your children, their children, and their children's children will now pay for that. There are legions of people who have lost family, pride and all everything that matters to then who are just waiting to be manipulated into being not-so-smart bombs. If Bush is supposedly making the world a safer place, he sure seems to be producing the opposite result.
Your efforts are misplaced. The four year old Thinkpad next to me says 'Made in Greenock, Scotland', just 30 miles from where I live in fact.
However, having worked for another laptop manufacturer here in Scotland, and having spoken to people at IBM, I can tell you that the devices are not 'made' where they say they are. The PCBs come from the far east, completely finished and tested. The casings are all moulded abroad. All that is 'made' here is that a line assembly worker takes a base, drops in a mainboard, hd and keyboard, and the unit is ready for test then ship.
I have a lot of respect for my countries engineering skills, in many regards we built the world. However, no one in my country played any part in the design or parts sourcing of these laptops. The best we can hope to do is improve the plant efficiency and dead-on-arrival return rates.
If you are buying a specific brand to be patriotic in some way, you might want to find out where exactly the real work went on. In my mind it's the mainboard that counts; thats where you want your quality. That and of course the quality of subcontracted components (lowest bidder etc)
I've even heard suggestions that companies do the 'made in XYZ' thing like this purely as a tax break. By performing some work in a specific country, they open access to government grants and tax exemptions and get to slap a 'made in a western country' that seems to appease some consumers.
if nations like the US spent their kind of anti-terrorism money on, something basic, like national healthcare. Would that have saved or benefited more lives than "fighting the war on terrorism?"
Emmm, have you been paying ANY attention? 9-11 claimed the life of 3,000 innocent souls. The civilian death tool in Iraq is 30,000.
The "War on Terror" is already in negative equity. Giving cigarettes out to school children would probably have less negative impact.
Why don't the terrorists just use the email address to send out spam too? If they send out millions of random messages, encrypted, to everyone, it will be impossible for them to figure out who is in the terrorist ring, and who is just receiving encrypted junk they can't open.
Neither the terrorists or the watchers care. There is plenty of room in the secret jails and we can always build more. No one is going to be bothered until it affects people close to them, and by then it will be too late. We have hundreds of people locked up worldwide on even more flimsy evidence; some of them just happened to be walking down the wrong street at the wrong time, or have been named via a rivals torture or cash-reward claim. The authorities know all this and frankly they don't give a shit. They are saving the world remember, gotta crack a few innocent eggs to make an omlette.
Bah, our Minister of the Interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, is best buds with the Bush administration, so what can a guy do ?
Run the guy out on a rail? Given the open "freedom fries" animosity shown by Bush and the USA in general towards France, you'd think the French people would take Bush's bed-fellow and string him up. Sounds like he's coming off here as the abused wife that keeps on returning to her tormentor.
And as such, you'll never hear "regime change" being said in relation to China.
China has seized to be communist (or at least stopped trying to become a true communist country) many years ago.
Absolutely, but you must bear in mind that more children of the cold war equate communism with totalitairianism, and have no idea what they are talking about most of the time.
I have often wondered why we haven't seen the emergence of worms with truly spectacular levels of sophistication.
If a worm is truely sophisticated, no one will have seen it! In theory, you could write one so well hidden that the only way to detect it would be the chance discovery via a packet scanner.
Also, remember the adage: the tall weeds get chopped first. A sophisticated worm might even take steps to restrict it's numbers to attempt to avoid detection due to obscurity.
Anti-virus writers will have their work cut out over the next 10 years and beyond. The problem may ever require some (user controlled!) trusted-computing techniques, although the simple idea of putting the OS on read-only media might go a long way, given an OS designed/tweaked to operate that way.
It's very easy, but the quality isn't all that great. I did it roughly ten years ago using a Sega Game Gear + TV tuner. Stripped out the LCD, put it in the projector.
There were a number of problems. The image wasn't very bright, and it didn't last long! The heat from the bulb screwed with the LCD and it stopped working after a while. Also, the resolution of the screen wasn't all that high, and you could see the pixels in the image.
Slashdot Mirror
Nonsense. Almost everything you do is driven by unconscious impulses. Finding a mate, getting a better job etc are all driven by the same desires that have been running our lives since the cavemen days.
So, when you look at a package, does your mind go along the following lines: "oh, that might be what I want. Oh wait, the eyes of the person on the box picture look odd. Oh, I get it, they've made her eyes slightly bigger than normal, which is a common marketing technique as it provides a child-like look and people like children. I will not buy that brand as they are trying to trick me!".
Reason and self control are part of what sets us apart from animals.
No, you are thinking of cutlery. ;-) In seriousness, I don't see humans as being all that different from animals. Animals have reason and self control, and it's not as if you can argue that humans are the most reasoned and self-controlled beings ever brought into existance. If you disagree, we could turn the topic of conversation to religion, politics and war...
Ridiculous logic, if you can call it that at all. You're simply assuming what you're arguing. "If my tiger-repelling rock doesn't work, why don't we see any tigers around here??"
No, it's not the same argument. I use the rock one myself quite often e.g. discussing current events such as terrorism, so I am completely familiar with the concept. And when Lisa first introduced us to it.
Businesses spend money with the sole purpose of ultimately getting more back. Return on Investment. Properly done commercials pay for themselves many times over. You cannot seriously sit there and suggest that they are ineffective, because all of the research suggests otherwise. Brand awareness is completely sub-concious. You will chose the brands you are familiar with, even if you only became aware of that brand through an advertisment. Television commericals are especially bad, they use mind-fuck techniques. Some of the things done on every show on US television are banned here in the UK as we don't like companies underhandedly manipulating people. This is not new ground and nothing I'm saying here is revolutionary.
Just because you are aware of the process, it doesn't make you immune. I'm as much their bitch as anyone else.
They can test them all they want. I'm living proof that ads don't have to have an effect on what you buy.
I call BS. OK, probably, you are like me and ads don't get you buying things you wouldn't normally buy. However, you have to eat, right? You drink the odd soda/fruit juice. Go to your kitchen and look through the brands. Ask yourself how many of them advertise and how many don't. Very few people I've asked to do this have found that they are not influenced.
The problem is that they have taken a desktop app and tried to reduce it for the mobile world. Bad idea, it's just not going to work. You really need to start from the ground up for current mobile tech. Resources are limited and you have to deal with that problem in any application.
Hey, it's not all bad. The cancer rates are really low and hardly anyone dies of that "old age" illness. Plus, Somalia is now one of the worlds pirate hotspots. And I mean real shiver-me-timbers, except this time it's high-caliber machine guns instead of cannons. Arrrr!
Somalia is fucked up right now, and it's in the top five of my "our leaders don't give a shit about 'democracy'" points to use. Some of the shit over there makes Saddam look like santa claus in comparison.
Most people who call themselves anarchists don't even know what it means. They are rebelling for the sake of rebelling, which in itself is totally conformist most of the time. From what I understand from some folks I know who do actually believe in this stuff, anarchists have no issue with local government. The idea is that a community is responsible for itself and there are no authority figures ordering them about. Sure, it's a pipe dream, but it's quite different to what most people believe about the subject. Most probably equate it with Vivian out of "The Young Ones".
So so so wrong, and the fact that you believe this is indicative about how bad things have gotten.
Osama doesn't care about your freedom. He doesn't care about your democracy. He is enacting revenge on country that have pissed him off in some way. In the case of the US, his initial beef was the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia, ironically there to support a non-free and non-democractic dictatorship, who are also US allies.
There's a reason they don't let you hear his words on TV. You might start asking awkard questions of your leaders if they did. Like "why are we supporting corrupt evil governments when it makes some not-so-nice people want to fly planes into our buildings?".
GMail uses HTTPS and POPS. Good luck on tracking that!! All the ISP will see is a) when you checked your mail and b) when you sent mail. The contents of the messages and the reciprients is private.
No, it's neither, that's my point. Look:
That's what a log file looks like. It's easier to fake than it is to get the real thing. Log files prove nothing and there complete lack of accountability and integrity makes them worthless as evidence. Any lawyer would tear "log file proof" apart with little effort.
The ISP providing that very same Internet service, I presume.
Em no. I'm presuming you perhaps don't know how the net works. Essentially, with any service, including p2p, the remote party needs your IP to do anything. Third-party companies are contracted by the media industry to do several things with the p2p networks, posing as random home users. One is poisoning, offering fake files to simply annoy and devalue the platform. The other is data gathering. This data can be used for many purposes, such as marketing (it's better than the musiuc charts) but it can also be used to lead to one of these extortion requests.
Once the company has a user they wish to target, they then contact the owner of that IP and request the details of the user that was using that IP at that particular time. ISPs generally keep this data, in fact in many countries it's a legal requirement.
The information gathered by the third party is not evidence. It's not even close. The best they can do is say that "John and I witnessed user XYZ download ABC on DEF date". Then it's my word against theirs.
Not without laughing at you, no.
Exsqueeze me? Sorry, I just pointed out how it's third party companies that are doing this work. Their continued contracting demands results. It's like traffic wardens on commission i.e. unacceptible.
Uhm, where the heck do you think police officers get their evidence?
Via trained methods learned after hours of training, worked out via hundreds of years of police evolution. Police Offices are QUALIFIED to collect evidence. Through this qualification they are TRUSTED to be impartial. The court system is 100% reliant on this impartiality. The media companies are not and they have a conflict of interest in this case. Have you ever even seen a court room, let alone be in one? You seem to be arguing about stuff you don't know all that much about. Nothing the media companies have to offer constitutes proof or evidence in anyway. It is 100% fakable and a decent lawyer will have this "evidence" thrown out during the first morning of the case, leaving nothing but "his word against mine".
Now you're just talking nonsense, and demonstrating that you don't know anything at all about how due process, discovery, accountability, or any aspect at all of the legal system works.
I think we've established that that's your role here, yes? Read your exact sentance above. "Accountability", that's the keyword here, what's going here has none. "Due-process" is not a for-profit company sending out extortion letters. It is a complete bastardisation of the legal system, but what isn't these days?
Psst, wanna IP address? Here's one: 123.123.123.123. Want another? OK, how about 192.168.100.1?
An IP address is proof of NOTHING. Log files are not proof. Screen grabs are not proof. Who are the people that got your IP? A company working for the media company? Can you say "conflict of interest"? Can you say "NOT police officers" (or anyone else qualified to be handling legal evidence)?
Should I ever find myself in this situation, the court will be provided with "proof" of how the lead lawyer on their side downloads kiddie porn at 4:30 in the morning. I'll have log files and whatever. Finding someones IP is pretty straight forward.
The default encoding in iTunes is not mp3. A large majority of the iPod owners will rip their entire collection into the AAC format and from that point will be tied to Apple hardware. When they go to upgrade to another device, they will ask if it can play their existing media. And Apple get another sale as the user finds they have to get another iPod. And as they are very nice, they will have no real issue with that.
Sure, I know you can re-rip your music, but who wants to do that? People being people, they will have lent or sold the original media by then and it won't be an option for many. And sure, with iTunes music, you can burn to CD and re-rip, but we are talking about normal people here, not the "tech elite". Many of them struggle to get the music on in the first place (I've personally helped three clueless users with iPods [ + some other folks with other devices]), so that idea will be beyond them.
Trust me here: Apples outstanding success with the iPod will hold them in the number one slot for a very long time. Provided they don't fsck it all up and pull a Sony or something.
I've seen it listed on a few members-only BT sites (low profile, not going to link them, sorry!), so they should be publically available to you if you go looking.
If it is in fact a loaner (to be returned) then Taco is a freaking moron. Slashdot has enough eyeballs to dictate a keeper model. What, a $3,500 laptop (retail) vs how many thousand eyeballs, the majority of who are actually interested in this sort of thing? Hell, I didn't even know you could get gamer laptops and I'm seriously thinking about it for my next system. Taco, stop whoring yourself for such cheap tricks, you can do better!
Wrong. You will subconciously recognize the brands on your next shopping trip and YOU WILL be more likely to buy them. Given the choice between a brand you "know" and a complete unknown, you will go for the "known", even if your "knowledge" of that product is through commercials you never paid attention to. If adverts don't work, why are they so common and expensive?
Hell, they even test the ads at 2x and 4x normal speed, to ensure that the logo and possibly the message are intact.
The UK version uses Taco Bell, both the recorded-from-cable and DVD do. I think this was an oversight as the UK doesn't have Taco Bell at all and the joke went way over everyones head. It was years later when the internet arrived that I started seeing other references and figured out it was a fast food resteraunt. Shame we don't have them; Mexican food rocks!
Move to the UK then! ;-) As an example, in a one hour show, you get the following: (times are approx)
Of course, the BBC doesn't show adverts, so when you watch (e.g.) Star Trek, it's only 45 minutes long.
It's funny, US TV has a particular style, brought about by your ad breaks. With different ad slots, this style is lost on us. There are millions of people who believe that that the whole minor-climax, pull to exterior show then small re-cap are actually part of modern television directing styles, when in fact they are actually your commercial book-ends!
Actually, I'd argue that iRobot had commercials in it. I noticed that ALL of the product placement happens within specific blocks, right next to each other. Every now and then they take a break from the action to tell you all about cars, shoes and package delivery. Then no mention until 30 minutes later, at which all three products are seen again.
Depends who you put on each side ;-) But, I admit I know little about the two events, other than they were both pretty important in shaping America.
They are morally equivalent for the vast majority of the fighting, despite your leaders consistent efforts to label anyone fighting in Iraq as a 'terrorist'. Sure, some jihad folks have gone there, but they are in the minority. Most of the fighting is being by groups who either hate each other and always hated each other, or those who don't want to see their country ruled as a puppet state for the profit of others. In the case of the former, ironically it was the removal of Saddam that lit the fuse. He was the only one brutal enough to keep them in check. These guys aren't the ones attacking US troops all that much. The other, latter element are 100% patriotic and are in no way different from anyone defending their sovereignty, and that includes the US revolution. Whats going on in Iraq is kind like the US revolution AND the civil war going on at once, with a little terrorism dropped in and over-emphasized by your leaders anxious to cover up their mistakes. Remember, the second the public makes the connection that Iraq has nothing to do with the 'war on terror', they are out on a rail.
How many deaths were there in the USA during the four years prior to 9-11? Even if a full on jihad had kicked off with multiple attacks, you'll never even get close. 9-11 was a fluke and nothing like it will likely happen again. Even the worst case scenarios such as dirty bombs or biological weapons would never come close. These weapons cause more psychological damage than real injury. In fact, numerous experts have said that a dirty bomb with a properly managed containment and cleanup would cause zero fatalities, beyond the initial blast.
The only way US terrorism would have claimed the 10,000 mark (let alone 30,000) would be if full scale war broke out within your borders.
I'd like to think some further terrorist attacks were prevented by waging war on terrorism - but mainly the actions in Afghanistan and the direct military actions on Al-Quada cells and similiar terrorist groups.
Sure, I can agree with that. However, I can assure you with near one hundred percent certainty that your actions in Iraq have incited more hatred and terrorist-inspiring currency than any possible gain obtained via removing Saddam from power.
Your children, their children, and their children's children will now pay for that. There are legions of people who have lost family, pride and all everything that matters to then who are just waiting to be manipulated into being not-so-smart bombs. If Bush is supposedly making the world a safer place, he sure seems to be producing the opposite result.
However, having worked for another laptop manufacturer here in Scotland, and having spoken to people at IBM, I can tell you that the devices are not 'made' where they say they are. The PCBs come from the far east, completely finished and tested. The casings are all moulded abroad. All that is 'made' here is that a line assembly worker takes a base, drops in a mainboard, hd and keyboard, and the unit is ready for test then ship.
I have a lot of respect for my countries engineering skills, in many regards we built the world. However, no one in my country played any part in the design or parts sourcing of these laptops. The best we can hope to do is improve the plant efficiency and dead-on-arrival return rates.
If you are buying a specific brand to be patriotic in some way, you might want to find out where exactly the real work went on. In my mind it's the mainboard that counts; thats where you want your quality. That and of course the quality of subcontracted components (lowest bidder etc)
I've even heard suggestions that companies do the 'made in XYZ' thing like this purely as a tax break. By performing some work in a specific country, they open access to government grants and tax exemptions and get to slap a 'made in a western country' that seems to appease some consumers.
Emmm, have you been paying ANY attention? 9-11 claimed the life of 3,000 innocent souls. The civilian death tool in Iraq is 30,000.
The "War on Terror" is already in negative equity. Giving cigarettes out to school children would probably have less negative impact.
Neither the terrorists or the watchers care. There is plenty of room in the secret jails and we can always build more. No one is going to be bothered until it affects people close to them, and by then it will be too late. We have hundreds of people locked up worldwide on even more flimsy evidence; some of them just happened to be walking down the wrong street at the wrong time, or have been named via a rivals torture or cash-reward claim. The authorities know all this and frankly they don't give a shit. They are saving the world remember, gotta crack a few innocent eggs to make an omlette.
Run the guy out on a rail? Given the open "freedom fries" animosity shown by Bush and the USA in general towards France, you'd think the French people would take Bush's bed-fellow and string him up. Sounds like he's coming off here as the abused wife that keeps on returning to her tormentor.
And as such, you'll never hear "regime change" being said in relation to China.
China has seized to be communist (or at least stopped trying to become a true communist country) many years ago.
Absolutely, but you must bear in mind that more children of the cold war equate communism with totalitairianism, and have no idea what they are talking about most of the time.
If a worm is truely sophisticated, no one will have seen it! In theory, you could write one so well hidden that the only way to detect it would be the chance discovery via a packet scanner. Also, remember the adage: the tall weeds get chopped first. A sophisticated worm might even take steps to restrict it's numbers to attempt to avoid detection due to obscurity.
Anti-virus writers will have their work cut out over the next 10 years and beyond. The problem may ever require some (user controlled!) trusted-computing techniques, although the simple idea of putting the OS on read-only media might go a long way, given an OS designed/tweaked to operate that way.
There were a number of problems. The image wasn't very bright, and it didn't last long! The heat from the bulb screwed with the LCD and it stopped working after a while. Also, the resolution of the screen wasn't all that high, and you could see the pixels in the image.