Well, the linked article is the Seattle Post Intelligencer -- not some random blog. Maybe you aren't getting full news in Houston, or maybe too few there even recognize the problem with Hurtt's statement.
I recently (about 2 weeks ago) had to buy two new monitors for my office. My business partner mentioned she saw a sale on some Sony LCD -- I said "no way" and we got something else. Had Sony not gone out of its way to be evil, I would've said "sure". Perhaps "Sonied" will be a term for companies that shoot themselves in the head with their marketing practices. I'd rather see that than a lot of customers being screwed.
I can understand how non-broadband users wouldn't feel much need for it. I do think that broadband is one of those things that many people find indispensible only after exposure. Broadband has changed the way I approach the internet. Google is always there -- a question comes to mind and within seconds I can be finding answers. I need a phone number -- dexonline or company website. Internet radio is amazing for people who aren't interested in what is commonly broadcast on regular radio. I'm sitting here in my dirt floor pottery studio in the middle of a field-- VOIP, broadband, slashdot... blah blah blah (I have a 400' wireless hop to a neighbor who lets me use his cable). Without broadband, I wouldn't have a phone out here -- at least not a price I'm willing to pay. My cell only works if I stand on a ladder, put the thing on speakerphone, and aim the antenna toward a cell tower. It's nice when I'm playing on work days -- my office can call me and thus, I can play more. Broadband is as essential to me as electricity anymore.
That was a lot of tangent -- anyway, my point is that broadband is one of those things many might find they can't live without only after experiencing pervasive access.
Gosh, I'm tired of these "pedantic" comments. Language is a tool we use to trade ideas. When used like a fine and delicate instrument, it is effective and efficient. When used in sloppy and lazy manner, it breeds nothing but misunderstanding and confusion. I'm apathetic to taste that so few would hoard clarity for understanding (FN1).
My last purchase at Worst Buy was about two years ago. I bought a HD that should have been $60 after rebate. My local store had the same HD for sale at $70... no rebate, no gimmicks, just $70. Long story short, I decided to "save" the $10 and go to Worst Buy. Well, I never got the $40 rebate and I paid $100 for the HD. So I lost $30 and Worst Buy lost a customer for life. Mind you, that wasn't the only rebate I got screwed out of -- just the last one.
Siphoning isn't terrible, but it isn't perfect either. For (awful car) example, if I siphon gas, I get some and the owner has some but neither of us has all of it. With a data copy, the original owner has all of it and the person who copied it has it all too (appropriate assumptions of course). What about spy words -- what is it called when a James Bond type uses a microcamera to snap pictures of secret government plans? That's what this is like -- without the bow ties, martinis, hot chicks, and microfilm. Just a geek and a flash drive... still, the spy world should supply the right term... I just don't know what it would be.
So actually I did check Dell's site because I couldn't really believe there were no PS2 ports... it looks to be true amazingly enough, although on some systems you can get them as an option. I don't see a serial port or par. port either on this cheapish model.
What I (and I am sure many companies) would like to see is a range of computers from a big name OEM like DELL that use PS2 for mouse and keyboard and then have a jumper on the motherboard or a software switch hidden in the BIOS behind a BIOS password that will completly disable all use of USB.
Well I don't know about Dell and I'm not about to go search their website as I already wrecked my uptime by rebooting, checking my BIOS, and seeing that under "integrated peripherals" one can disable USB 1.1 and 2.0. Gigabyte K7 Triton, KT600 motherboard. As for PS2 mouse/kbd -- are you saying Dells don't have those ports? Even my mini-itx board has both.
I see it not so much as "loss" or "theft". Both terms imply that the data no longer exists where it is supposed to be. Loss means it's gone completely, theft that it has been taken in a "move" like scenario rather than merely copied. It seems a more appropriate term for this type of situation would imply the existence of the data in it's original location, and an unauthorized copy in an unknown location. This is much harder to detect because obviously, the original is still in tact -- absence of the data is a big clue something is amiss. Maybe the best term is simply "unathorized copy". In any case, the title mislead me -- I was thinking about HD corruption of small areas leaving me unaware that some of my data may go missing.
Manufacturers include sleep modes on their products because it is what their customers want, says Matthew Armishaw from the Market Transformation Programme (MTP).
I remember my first exposure to "standby". An HP laserjet 4L I bought in 1995 -- it didn't have an off button. That bothered me so much I bought one of those undermonitor powerbars with switches on the front so I could turn the darn thing off. Since then, more and more things have come out that can't be shut off and I've sort of accepted "standby" now... but I never wanted it.
I also modified a program once to serve my needs, although my mod was on software of a much simpler type. I had that option because I could muck about in the source. The fact is, he couldn't modify the closed source drivers, and he could the open ones. Open source puts the power over hardware in the hands of anyone who wants to learn a thing or two. That's empowerment -- not a fanboy rant.
The scanner software that comes with the scanner he's presently using shuts the thing down if there are hardware faults. All his mods count as hardware faults thus making the shipped driver useless to him. He discusses a closed source pro driver which is a bit better, but still not perfect for his needs. Then explains how he uses SANE to make the thing actually work like he wants.
The true usefulness of the SANE drivers lies not in the front-end applications, but rather in the fact that the raw code for the back-end is open source.....I was able, with a bit of practice and programming study, to disable the calibration and error correction routines found in the driver for the Canon LIDE 20. This allowed me to use the more extensively modified scanners easily and effectively, and was vital in letting me create the higher quality photographs of the later-model scanner cameras.
That's cool -- an artist embarks on getting enough programming language to modify a program so he can use it like he wants to. That's owning your hardware in the purest sense. And it's made possible by the community that generates all that great open source software.
If lack of MS-Office is a threat, then Apple should lend a hand to Neooffice. Neooffice is dog slow on the macs I've used (fastest = 1.67ghz powerbook). Seriously, the best way to run Openoffice on a mac, is to run it on a linux machine and do X forwarding over ssh. It's amazingly zippy that way, but really lousy when running locally on a mac (at least on a G4 -- I don't have any G5 machines).
The fact that life is on earth, and nowhere else we can see so far, seems like a reasonable reason to favour earth as our working assumption for the origin of earthly life.
Having thoroughly searched my shirt pocket and finding nothing but a piece of lint there, I can say conclusively that lint exists only in my shirt pocket.
I was blessed with a terribly short memory from a very young age, but along with it came the ability to assimilate and aggregate seemingly different items together, and do so quickly. My bad memory led to VERY low grades but very high aptitude testing -- quite a conundrum. I took to BBSes and other forms of "instant variable information" quickly at a very young age, and when the Internet hit (mostly gopher at that time, from what I recall), I absorbed it immediately.
I was talking with someone just yesterday about knowledge. It seems to me that what is far more important than storing a bunch of facts in the brain, is storing the methods and means by which one can find those facts. For example -- if you memorized the population of Angola in high school 20 years ago, that's a useless waste of brain space because the answer changes from year to year and more importantly, because that data can be retrieved from various sources without taxing your personal resources (brain).
Now, before the internet, you would have to be familiar with librarys and card catalogs -- learning how to use those efficiently would have been of much greater value than memorizing a bunch of discrete facts. Today, the internet can provide a great deal of information in the same way, and learning how to navigate it through search tools is far more valuable than the individual bits of information a search turns up.
I think the whole "information overload" thing boils down to a lot of people who didn't learn "how to learn". If you learned how to discover new information in the most general sense, and on your own, the internet is not a source of frustration or overload -- it's a repository of all those things it doesn't make sense to store in your head. For people who need to be spoon fed every fact -- heck yeah, they'll be overloaded, but so what?
As to the parent poster -- don't chide yourself for being smart. It's smart to store only that information which you need immediately locally (and by locally I mean in your brain). Everything else belongs in an external but accessible database.
This is just another ploy to increase tax revenue without instigating a state income tax, which the people of Tennessee continue to reject.
I too live in a state w/ no income tax (Washington) and have a small business. It came as quite a shock to me that I have to pay property tax every year on personal property -- fax machice, stapler, everything -- after paying sales tax when I bought the crap of course. Why is there no outcry from the public about this crazy taxation?? Simple answer, most people don't own businesses. Taxes on business are like submarine attacks, no body notices at all. If TN was to enact such a tax, most people either wouldn't care or will just assume that rich businesses deserve it.
I'd like to see business taxes go away completely and WA turn into an income tax state. Then there'd finally be enough people to actually complain about how high the taxes really are. Most taxes are hidden here so nothing happens.
Slashdot Mirror
I wish marriage between any two people was outlawed. It would have saved me from immense folly. Twice.
Ahh, "chron.com" -- that would be the Houston Chronicle right? Here's the local story for GP poster:. html
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/3661414
Well, the linked article is the Seattle Post Intelligencer -- not some random blog. Maybe you aren't getting full news in Houston, or maybe too few there even recognize the problem with Hurtt's statement.
I recently (about 2 weeks ago) had to buy two new monitors for my office. My business partner mentioned she saw a sale on some Sony LCD -- I said "no way" and we got something else. Had Sony not gone out of its way to be evil, I would've said "sure". Perhaps "Sonied" will be a term for companies that shoot themselves in the head with their marketing practices. I'd rather see that than a lot of customers being screwed.
I can understand how non-broadband users wouldn't feel much need for it. I do think that broadband is one of those things that many people find indispensible only after exposure. Broadband has changed the way I approach the internet. Google is always there -- a question comes to mind and within seconds I can be finding answers. I need a phone number -- dexonline or company website. Internet radio is amazing for people who aren't interested in what is commonly broadcast on regular radio. I'm sitting here in my dirt floor pottery studio in the middle of a field-- VOIP, broadband, slashdot ... blah blah blah (I have a 400' wireless hop to a neighbor who lets me use his cable). Without broadband, I wouldn't have a phone out here -- at least not a price I'm willing to pay. My cell only works if I stand on a ladder, put the thing on speakerphone, and aim the antenna toward a cell tower. It's nice when I'm playing on work days -- my office can call me and thus, I can play more. Broadband is as essential to me as electricity anymore.
That was a lot of tangent -- anyway, my point is that broadband is one of those things many might find they can't live without only after experiencing pervasive access.
Thank you Dr. Sticky.
Someone mod him funny.
FN1:
To be pedantic:
+50 incoherent stereotype confusion.
Every republican knows that "chicken little liberals" are all athiests.
My last purchase at Worst Buy was about two years ago. I bought a HD that should have been $60 after rebate. My local store had the same HD for sale at $70 ... no rebate, no gimmicks, just $70. Long story short, I decided to "save" the $10 and go to Worst Buy. Well, I never got the $40 rebate and I paid $100 for the HD. So I lost $30 and Worst Buy lost a customer for life. Mind you, that wasn't the only rebate I got screwed out of -- just the last one.
Siphoning isn't terrible, but it isn't perfect either. For (awful car) example, if I siphon gas, I get some and the owner has some but neither of us has all of it. With a data copy, the original owner has all of it and the person who copied it has it all too (appropriate assumptions of course). What about spy words -- what is it called when a James Bond type uses a microcamera to snap pictures of secret government plans? That's what this is like -- without the bow ties, martinis, hot chicks, and microfilm. Just a geek and a flash drive ... still, the spy world should supply the right term ... I just don't know what it would be.
So actually I did check Dell's site because I couldn't really believe there were no PS2 ports ... it looks to be true amazingly enough, although on some systems you can get them as an option. I don't see a serial port or par. port either on this cheapish model.
I see it not so much as "loss" or "theft". Both terms imply that the data no longer exists where it is supposed to be. Loss means it's gone completely, theft that it has been taken in a "move" like scenario rather than merely copied. It seems a more appropriate term for this type of situation would imply the existence of the data in it's original location, and an unauthorized copy in an unknown location. This is much harder to detect because obviously, the original is still in tact -- absence of the data is a big clue something is amiss. Maybe the best term is simply "unathorized copy". In any case, the title mislead me -- I was thinking about HD corruption of small areas leaving me unaware that some of my data may go missing.
I remember my first exposure to "standby". An HP laserjet 4L I bought in 1995 -- it didn't have an off button. That bothered me so much I bought one of those undermonitor powerbars with switches on the front so I could turn the darn thing off. Since then, more and more things have come out that can't be shut off and I've sort of accepted "standby" now
Fanboy?
I also modified a program once to serve my needs, although my mod was on software of a much simpler type. I had that option because I could muck about in the source. The fact is, he couldn't modify the closed source drivers, and he could the open ones. Open source puts the power over hardware in the hands of anyone who wants to learn a thing or two. That's empowerment -- not a fanboy rant.
The scanner software that comes with the scanner he's presently using shuts the thing down if there are hardware faults. All his mods count as hardware faults thus making the shipped driver useless to him. He discusses a closed source pro driver which is a bit better, but still not perfect for his needs. Then explains how he uses SANE to make the thing actually work like he wants.
That's cool -- an artist embarks on getting enough programming language to modify a program so he can use it like he wants to. That's owning your hardware in the purest sense. And it's made possible by the community that generates all that great open source software.
If lack of MS-Office is a threat, then Apple should lend a hand to Neooffice. Neooffice is dog slow on the macs I've used (fastest = 1.67ghz powerbook). Seriously, the best way to run Openoffice on a mac, is to run it on a linux machine and do X forwarding over ssh. It's amazingly zippy that way, but really lousy when running locally on a mac (at least on a G4 -- I don't have any G5 machines).
I was wondering if there would be linux angle on this. After the Gnome stuff is done, will we see Ktv, Kbrowser, etc.?
Add me to your list.
Now, before the internet, you would have to be familiar with librarys and card catalogs -- learning how to use those efficiently would have been of much greater value than memorizing a bunch of discrete facts. Today, the internet can provide a great deal of information in the same way, and learning how to navigate it through search tools is far more valuable than the individual bits of information a search turns up.
I think the whole "information overload" thing boils down to a lot of people who didn't learn "how to learn". If you learned how to discover new information in the most general sense, and on your own, the internet is not a source of frustration or overload -- it's a repository of all those things it doesn't make sense to store in your head. For people who need to be spoon fed every fact -- heck yeah, they'll be overloaded, but so what?
As to the parent poster -- don't chide yourself for being smart. It's smart to store only that information which you need immediately locally (and by locally I mean in your brain). Everything else belongs in an external but accessible database.
I suppose I should have made it clear that this was well over a year ago. But it left a negative impression.
I'd like to see business taxes go away completely and WA turn into an income tax state. Then there'd finally be enough people to actually complain about how high the taxes really are. Most taxes are hidden here so nothing happens.