Yeah, I know. Sorry to be so pedantic. But it irks me when people refer to food products as "natural" or "real" as if such things don't involve chemistry, but are made of some magically pure unadulterated goodness that no mere chemicals can hope to match.
When it comes here, believe me China will be supplying the tech to the USA. Who do you think already manufactures CCD imagers and most of the other components required to build such a system? China. And if they aren't yet capable of providing all of it, by the time we're ready to buy into it wholesale they will be.
Sugar (all the different sugars) are chemicals. All life is composed of chemicals. What you mean is, we replaced one chemical in our diets that was unnecessary and very unhealthy with another one that is just as unnecessary but even more unhealthy.
if I walk into a store and steal a few bucks worth of stuff I can be punished. If I (ahem!)"steal" a movie or a song over the Internet, I can be punished. Rip off taxpayers to the tune of two hundred billion dollars and I can just relax and enjoy the money. What the hell happened? Where did it all go? If they didn't use it for promised network buildouts... what, exactly, did they do with it?
I tend to agree with you. Historically speaking, people generally won't work for peanuts forever, and if they don't get a slice of the pie bad things happen. Still, will America even have a viable manufacturing sector in the next five or ten years, much less the decades it will take for the processes you describe to have their effect? A lot of things are happening very quickly right now, and I don't know if we have so much time.
What we are seeing are not natural market forces at work. China's economic "miracle" has been performed at the expense of the rest of the industrialized world (America in particular but Europe is being hit as well.) China's government has taken a number of calculated steps intended to acquire as much wealth, technology and scientific knowledge as possible in as short a time frame as they can manage. Their methods for doing so are destructive to other economies: granted, they simply exploited our weaknesses but nevertheless they are not good neighbors. When I dealing with a foreign company I'll choose one from Europe, thank you very much. You can do business with them... they understand that good business means everyone walks away from the table with something.
Personally, I don't think we should be doing business with China at all (not that we have any choice in the matter at the moment) until they clean up their act. I doubt that's going to happen. I doubt they know how to make that happen. I know that we don't.
Huh... here in the U.S. most of our local governments often refer to tax-paying citizens as customers nowadays. The Internal Revenue Service refers to taxpayers as customers. That's not really accurate, since the practice of "giving one's custom" to a particular vendor is predicated upon having a choice. I am a customer because I choose to give you my custom. I don't have a choice when it comes to my government, my taxing bodies or, for that matter, my railroad. I may be a citizen, a taxpayer, or a passenger... but I'm not a customer.
However, Microsoft do not kill people even through inaction...
You're sure about that? And I'm under no compunction to avoid tossing a little nastiness in Microsoft's direction now and then. Besides, they're big boys, I'm sure they can handle the implied insult.
There's a lot in common with Microsoft's upper management and the Scientology crowd. Both are very focused in what they do (mass walletectomies), and both are utterly ruthless when it comes to extinguishing opposition.
AT&T itself trains some pretty good people. Unfortunately, they no longer train enough of them (particularly when it came to the original AT&T Broadband rollout) so they resorted to the use of outside contractors. Most of them were pretty useless.
Of course, it's not just AT&T. I also had Dish Network for a while, and I had to have them come out four times, different contractors each time, before I could get one that could figure out how to install the dish on my house. It was a tricky install I admit, trees and roof angle and so forth. One guy wanted to trench my lawn and install a concrete base with a pole on it. Finally a Russian guy and his son came out, they were properly equipped with survey equipment and an air of general competence, and had the damn thing installed in twenty minutes. Worked fine ever since.
No kidding... for several months while I had AT&T Broadband for cable service I never could get a decent picture. Internet speeds were nothing to write home about either. Techs came out a number of times (usually contractor types, not AT&T-trained) and one of them put in an amplifier. Which worked just fine at amplifying the noise (and he stuck $90 on my bill.)
Finally I called to cancel my service because I wasn't getting that for which I was paying. The operator convinced me to give them one more try... I said OK. Next day (a Sunday, believe it or not) this cherrypicker truck pulls up, with AT&T emblazoned on the side. This time I got a technician that had been through AT&T's in-house training program and wasn't afraid to get off his ass and climb a few poles. So he spent about three hours going down the street, pole-by-pole, until he called down and said "Whoops! Here's your problem" and tossed down a few feet of burned and blackened cable with squirrel toothmarks all over it, right down to the bare copper. It was a mess. So he replaced the cable for the whole block and we all got a great picture (and I got my 4 mbits/sec back.) Guy was pretty cool, really knew his stuff. It was like dealing with the AT&T of old. He also took the price of that stupid wideband amp off my bill -and- let me keep it! So I kept my service for a few more years until I moved.
I never found any squirrel bones, but I hope the 90 VDC feed cooked the little bastard.
My understanding is that Australians are largely descended from the guards, not the convict population as such. But that's just what I read somewhere on the Web.
But yeah, a lot of the original colonists came here to escape religious persecution. Not that they were necessarily any more kooky than the people in the countries from which they were fleeing: they were just different brands of kooks. As history clearly tells us, religious kooks are not tolerant of those with different dogmatic views of the world, and will spontaneously self-ignite if placed in close proximity to each other.
Well, remember Ryan Wieber and the Ryan vs. Dorkman short? That little effort got him a job at Lucasarts (although last I heard he was working for another effects house doing compositing for Heroes.)
Re:US Court system still sucks
on
SCO Loses
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· Score: 1
They take forever, they're incredibly expensive, but they sometimes deliver the right result? You wouldn't accept that from anyone else.
Why not? We accept it from Microsoft, and a lot of other software vendors too, for that matter.
if you can't pass the reaction time test under whatever activity you were engaged in while driving, you a fined...
You mispelled "fiend".
Reaction time (or latency) by itself is not sufficient, I don't think. Judgment (the ability to make a proper cognitive analysis of a situation) can be affected well before your response time slows significantly. How you can test for that I don't know. Besides, normal human reaction times vary considerably from person to person: some people are so slow that you wonder how they can walk. But they drive cars perfectly well.
The other question is, are we talking a design fault, or a problem with that particular unit? Either way, I'd like to know what kind of procedures the State in question has for certifying such equipment.
These were a direct result of people illegally distributing files via P2P networks after stripping the ads between the show.
Can you provide at least a minimal reference for that assertion? I mean, I was seeing local ad overlays injected by my cable company well before Napster came on the scene, and the rise of P2P in general. I think you're inferring cause and effect here: the broadcasters figured out that consumers would tolerate this baloney, and since it presumably brings in more money they do it. I agree, it's annoying as hell but let's face it... it would have happened anyway. You're further assuming that commercial-free downloads make a damn bit of difference in the viewing habits of the bulk of their viewers. I admit, that's probably the assumption the broadcast programmers are making, but that doesn't mean it's true.
Cable television was originally offered as an alternative to broadcast TV because it was a paid service, and therefore commercial free. That state of affairs didn't last long, of course, and now we're all subject to advertising on television that we pay good money to watch. I don't care if its interstitial or overlaid, it's still advertising. So there's no need to invoke your hated God of P2P to explain why more advertising is encroaching upon our collective viewing experience. You just need to think "greed".
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I know. Sorry to be so pedantic. But it irks me when people refer to food products as "natural" or "real" as if such things don't involve chemistry, but are made of some magically pure unadulterated goodness that no mere chemicals can hope to match.
When it comes here, believe me China will be supplying the tech to the USA. Who do you think already manufactures CCD imagers and most of the other components required to build such a system? China. And if they aren't yet capable of providing all of it, by the time we're ready to buy into it wholesale they will be.
Sugar (all the different sugars) are chemicals. All life is composed of chemicals. What you mean is, we replaced one chemical in our diets that was unnecessary and very unhealthy with another one that is just as unnecessary but even more unhealthy.
if I walk into a store and steal a few bucks worth of stuff I can be punished. If I (ahem!)"steal" a movie or a song over the Internet, I can be punished. Rip off taxpayers to the tune of two hundred billion dollars and I can just relax and enjoy the money. What the hell happened? Where did it all go? If they didn't use it for promised network buildouts ... what, exactly, did they do with it?
Unbe-fucking-leivable.
What are they smoking?
Darl McBride's crack pipe. Now that Darl doesn't need it anymore he loaned it to them.
I tend to agree with you. Historically speaking, people generally won't work for peanuts forever, and if they don't get a slice of the pie bad things happen. Still, will America even have a viable manufacturing sector in the next five or ten years, much less the decades it will take for the processes you describe to have their effect? A lot of things are happening very quickly right now, and I don't know if we have so much time.
... they understand that good business means everyone walks away from the table with something.
What we are seeing are not natural market forces at work. China's economic "miracle" has been performed at the expense of the rest of the industrialized world (America in particular but Europe is being hit as well.) China's government has taken a number of calculated steps intended to acquire as much wealth, technology and scientific knowledge as possible in as short a time frame as they can manage. Their methods for doing so are destructive to other economies: granted, they simply exploited our weaknesses but nevertheless they are not good neighbors. When I dealing with a foreign company I'll choose one from Europe, thank you very much. You can do business with them
Personally, I don't think we should be doing business with China at all (not that we have any choice in the matter at the moment) until they clean up their act. I doubt that's going to happen. I doubt they know how to make that happen. I know that we don't.
You spelled "Neil" wrong.
Huh ... here in the U.S. most of our local governments often refer to tax-paying citizens as customers nowadays. The Internal Revenue Service refers to taxpayers as customers. That's not really accurate, since the practice of "giving one's custom" to a particular vendor is predicated upon having a choice. I am a customer because I choose to give you my custom. I don't have a choice when it comes to my government, my taxing bodies or, for that matter, my railroad. I may be a citizen, a taxpayer, or a passenger ... but I'm not a customer.
... it looks like the site is run by a bunch of fucking dumbasses.
... the fool, or the fool who follows a fool?
Yeah, but we keep coming back. Who is more the fool
However, Microsoft do not kill people even through inaction ...
You're sure about that? And I'm under no compunction to avoid tossing a little nastiness in Microsoft's direction now and then. Besides, they're big boys, I'm sure they can handle the implied insult.
There's a lot in common with Microsoft's upper management and the Scientology crowd. Both are very focused in what they do (mass walletectomies), and both are utterly ruthless when it comes to extinguishing opposition.
AT&T itself trains some pretty good people. Unfortunately, they no longer train enough of them (particularly when it came to the original AT&T Broadband rollout) so they resorted to the use of outside contractors. Most of them were pretty useless.
Of course, it's not just AT&T. I also had Dish Network for a while, and I had to have them come out four times, different contractors each time, before I could get one that could figure out how to install the dish on my house. It was a tricky install I admit, trees and roof angle and so forth. One guy wanted to trench my lawn and install a concrete base with a pole on it. Finally a Russian guy and his son came out, they were properly equipped with survey equipment and an air of general competence, and had the damn thing installed in twenty minutes. Worked fine ever since.
They are now.
No kidding ... for several months while I had AT&T Broadband for cable service I never could get a decent picture. Internet speeds were nothing to write home about either. Techs came out a number of times (usually contractor types, not AT&T-trained) and one of them put in an amplifier. Which worked just fine at amplifying the noise (and he stuck $90 on my bill.)
... I said OK. Next day (a Sunday, believe it or not) this cherrypicker truck pulls up, with AT&T emblazoned on the side. This time I got a technician that had been through AT&T's in-house training program and wasn't afraid to get off his ass and climb a few poles. So he spent about three hours going down the street, pole-by-pole, until he called down and said "Whoops! Here's your problem" and tossed down a few feet of burned and blackened cable with squirrel toothmarks all over it, right down to the bare copper. It was a mess. So he replaced the cable for the whole block and we all got a great picture (and I got my 4 mbits/sec back.) Guy was pretty cool, really knew his stuff. It was like dealing with the AT&T of old. He also took the price of that stupid wideband amp off my bill -and- let me keep it! So I kept my service for a few more years until I moved.
Finally I called to cancel my service because I wasn't getting that for which I was paying. The operator convinced me to give them one more try
I never found any squirrel bones, but I hope the 90 VDC feed cooked the little bastard.
Probably practice for whatever their real offering will be, assuming Google decides that's a market it is even interested in pursuing.
The problem comes in when you equate "citizen" with "consumer".
My understanding is that Australians are largely descended from the guards, not the convict population as such. But that's just what I read somewhere on the Web.
But yeah, a lot of the original colonists came here to escape religious persecution. Not that they were necessarily any more kooky than the people in the countries from which they were fleeing: they were just different brands of kooks. As history clearly tells us, religious kooks are not tolerant of those with different dogmatic views of the world, and will spontaneously self-ignite if placed in close proximity to each other.
... what it sees as 'a prime threat to society, the growth on the Internet of sexual material involving consenting adults.
... what? That particular horse left the barn decades ago, and it's not coming back.
What? Really, I mean
These people need to laid, and stop trying to force their pattern for living on everyone else.
Well, remember Ryan Wieber and the Ryan vs. Dorkman short? That little effort got him a job at Lucasarts (although last I heard he was working for another effects house doing compositing for Heroes.)
They take forever, they're incredibly expensive, but they sometimes deliver the right result? You wouldn't accept that from anyone else.
Why not? We accept it from Microsoft, and a lot of other software vendors too, for that matter.
fnord
if you can't pass the reaction time test under whatever activity you were engaged in while driving, you a fined...
You mispelled "fiend".
Reaction time (or latency) by itself is not sufficient, I don't think. Judgment (the ability to make a proper cognitive analysis of a situation) can be affected well before your response time slows significantly. How you can test for that I don't know. Besides, normal human reaction times vary considerably from person to person: some people are so slow that you wonder how they can walk. But they drive cars perfectly well.
The other question is, are we talking a design fault, or a problem with that particular unit? Either way, I'd like to know what kind of procedures the State in question has for certifying such equipment.
These were a direct result of people illegally distributing files via P2P networks after stripping the ads between the show.
... it would have happened anyway. You're further assuming that commercial-free downloads make a damn bit of difference in the viewing habits of the bulk of their viewers. I admit, that's probably the assumption the broadcast programmers are making, but that doesn't mean it's true.
Can you provide at least a minimal reference for that assertion? I mean, I was seeing local ad overlays injected by my cable company well before Napster came on the scene, and the rise of P2P in general. I think you're inferring cause and effect here: the broadcasters figured out that consumers would tolerate this baloney, and since it presumably brings in more money they do it. I agree, it's annoying as hell but let's face it
Cable television was originally offered as an alternative to broadcast TV because it was a paid service, and therefore commercial free. That state of affairs didn't last long, of course, and now we're all subject to advertising on television that we pay good money to watch. I don't care if its interstitial or overlaid, it's still advertising. So there's no need to invoke your hated God of P2P to explain why more advertising is encroaching upon our collective viewing experience. You just need to think "greed".
Yeah, I'll buy that. I should have been more specific, sorry. "Major record labels", how's that.