Does the PS3's license agreement say that Sony can add or remove features at will? If so, it seems like all the ranting and noise about a lawsuit is for naught.
The first generation PS3's had full hardware support for PS2 games - as support for the PS2 gamer was slowly extinguished in later versions of the console, do you recall any successful class action lawsuits there?
While I'm sure many will welcome you taking Sony to task, do you mind if I ask exactly how a $10 voucher against your next purchase of a Sony product will help you run Linux on your PS3?
Three words a conservative judge does not want to hear are "class action lawsuit."
If your ultimate target is a decision in the federal system you are going to have to define and limit your class effectively, allege and prove more than $5,000,000 in damages.
A PC is a tool and like all tools, works best with the fewest necessary peripheries. IT guys recognize this. They have no use for Bob and they feel (perhaps rightly) that their users should have no use for Bob and Bob like programs bring no real value.
A tool works best when it is designed for its users.
The user who found value in BOB or Clippy was not the geek in IT - and not the poster to Slashdot.
He won't be attracted to the GIMP by its name or its GUI - whatever horsepower is to found underneath.
But he will find a welcoming environment in Second Life - and may just discover that his college or university has an outpost there: Academic Organizations in Second Life.
So dear old Auntie Beeb has added DRM to all over their content so the dear British taxpayer has to fork over more cash to watch programmes they already paid for. Brilliant....Not.
The BBC has co-production and distribution agreements with companies all over the world. That translates directly into bigger budgets, production on locations abroad, recruitment of A-list talents, and so on.
Brighton, England--February 22, 2010-- MASTERPIECE on PBS and BBC Worldwide Sales and Distribution, Americas have announced a major co-production deal that includes a new production, with the BBC, of Upstairs Downstairs--one of the most-loved and honored television series of all time. Upstairs Downstairs will air in the U.S. in 2011 as part of MASTERPIECE 's 40th anniversary season on PBS.
The deal also includes Sherlock, a 21st-century spin on Arthur Conan Doyle's classic Sherlock Holmes novels, and three Aurelio Zen mysteries, adapted from the best-selling novels by Michael Dibden set in Italy.
Jean Marsh, who will reprise her role in the new three-part series as Rose, the parlor maid. Dame Eileen Atkins, the co-creator of the original program, will also star. Screenwriter Heidi Thomas (Cranford) is setting the new Upstairs Downstairs in the same house at 165 Eaton Place in 1936, during the period leading up to World War II.
The thrilling new Sherlock series is a fast-paced, witty take on the legendary crime drama, now set in present day London and starring Benedict Cumberbatch (Atonement, The Last Enemy) as the eponymous detective. Martin Freeman (The Office UK, Hot Fuzz) plays his loyal friend, Doctor John Watson, and Rupert Graves (God on Trial, The Forsyte Saga) is Inspector Lestrade. Co-created by Steven Moffat (Doctor Who, Coupling, Jekyll) and Mark Gatiss (The League of Gentlemen, Crooked House), the iconic details from Arthur Conan Doyle's original books remain: same address, same names--and somewhere out there, Moriarty is waiting.
Rufus Sewell (The Eleventh Hour, Middlemarch, John Adams) will star as Italian detective Aurelio Zen in three episodes based on the popular mysteries by Michael Dibden. The series is being shot on location in Italy by Left Bank Pictures, the production company behind the acclaimed Wallander television series.
Just plug in a monitor, ethernet cable, keyboard, and mouse, and away you go. For the terminally clueless(no pun intended), for whom peripheral hookup is a bit daunting, there would be nothing stopping you from charging a touch more and shipping a whole netbook. Even full x86 netbooks can be found at ~$200 with fair frequency, and nasty little PDA-in-a-netbook's-body offerings have been under $100 for a while now
People will want to do their bankng on the go. They will not tolerate carrying another single-purpose gadget.
The answer is, and always will be, because software is math.
Patents are traditionally awarded to the man who sees a problem and find a creative and practical solution that has eluded everyone else who began with the same knowledge and resources.
Math and logic are simply tools - as accessible to the machinist as they are to the programmer.
There was so much that was grim, bloody and sordid about the creation of new and special weapons to kill people that I searched for comic relief.
The anthropologists in O.S.S. were asked to come up with some tabu that was uniquely Japanese, something to which only that race was sensitive. I was told the answer was bowel elimination. A Japanes thought nothing of urinating in public, but he held defecation to be a very secret, shameful thing. A Japanese soldier, even in jungle fighting, even at great risk, would seek a private place to defecate. Here was my comic relief.
I had a group of chemists work out a skatol compound, a liquid which duplicated the revolting odor of a very loose bowel movement. It left no doubt in anyone's mind as to what it was. We put this obnoxious chemical in collapsible tubes, and I named it, "Who? Me?" The tubes were flown over the hump to Chungking and distributed to children in Japanese-occupied cities Peiping, Shanghai, Canton, etc.
When a Japanese officer, preferably of high rank, came waling down the crowded sidewalk, the little Chinese boys and girls would slip up behind him and squirt a shot of "Who? Me?" at his trouser seat. As a sort of extra dividend, our chemical was insoluble in soap and water, but very soluble in dry-cleaner's fluids, so, when sent for cleaning, the contaminated uniform endowed all the clothing in the batch with its offense.
"Who? Me?" was no world-shaking new development,but it cost the Japanese a world of "face."
Sometimes a joke can go too far.
A small supply of "Who? Me?" tubes, which were our original test samples, began to disappear. I had the cabinet locked. The lock was picked, which was not at all surprising, since we instructed all of our saboteurs in the art of picking open all makes of locks and door latches. With the help of an assistant I booby-trapped the locker by having a tube of "Who? Me? 7 ' filled under such an aerosol pressure, that when the cabinet door was opened it would spray the thief, causing him to lose both his self-composure and his anonymity. That stopped all the monkey business but the culprit, so easily identified, was too highly placed to be scolded.
If MS refuses to pay their fair share of taxes (after all, they enjoy the benefits of the roads, police, fire, and other services that are supported by these taxes, correct?
How many of those services are paid out of local property taxes?
Microsoft owns or leases 15 million square feet of office space in the Puget Sound region. It employs 40,000 people - and pays them well enough so that the median value of a single family home in Redmond is $500,000.
Lovell was the director of R&D for the OSS. The man who became Bill Donovan's Professor Moriarty. You'll find no better introduction to the real world of spy tech than here.
A most important field of deception and concealment concerned the landing of spies and saboteurs on enemy occupied coastlines, and at the exact spot where he or she would be met by friendly personnel from the underground organizations. This proved to be a most difficult problem for us to solve. Such landings had to be made on nights with no moon.
Early in the war fixed lights and blinkers were used on the shore to mark the rendezvous, but enemy airplanes and sur face vessels often spotted them. Many an agent and his reception committee of resistance fighters were surrounded, picked up and summarily shot.
The ideal shore signal to guide the O.S.S. agent to the selected place was an ultra-violet beacon. A small UV bulb, powered by a single dry-cell battery, would flash intermittently for almost a year. The difficulty arose when we found that even a person with superior eyesight could pick out the ultra-violet signal in the blackness of night only from a distressingly short range. I could not detect it at all beyond one hundred feet. I was about to abandon the UV system of landing signal as worthless, when a surgeon specializing in cataract removals told me by chance that patients who had undergone that operation had extraordinary sensitivity to ultra-violet light. We asked for volunteers and tested several people whose cataracts had been removed. To our astonishment we found that they could see and pinpoint the little, flashing ultra violet light from over a mile away, whereas the rest of us could see nothing but inky blackness.
Brave, elderly people, so selected, guided our operators infallibly to these normally invisible rendezvous. I am certain the Germans and the Japanese never had the faintest idea of how it was done.
Yeah finding a whole bunch of welders is one thing. Finding technically training individuals in a whole other state (or asking your entire workforce to move to Alabama) is something else.
The distance from Seattle to Vancouver BC is 141 miles.
2) Have sensible punishments for breaking the AUP. (No cops, no expulsions. Detention sure, suspension/parental notification, if you have to.)
Parental notification is essential.
Parents will go nuclear when they discover that you have been covering up for their kids when were caught surfing for porn.
Nothing can be so bad that someone else calling the cops won't make worse. You do not have the luxury of ignoring state and federal law.
3) Leave the net _wide open_ for each student.
It isn't going to happen. Not in the public school. Not in the evangelical Protestant or Catholic private school. Not in any school under the supervision of a state board of education. Not in any school receiving federal funding.
Yes, this means kids might get exposed to hardcore porn from time to time. Big f'in deal. For me the net wasn't around and I saw good ol' VHS tapes
Sold over or under the counter?
There has always been a world of difference between porn as a mass-market product and the truly hardcore stuff.
Fortunately my little corporation isn't in Washington. I know first hand that there are many states more conducive to small business.
Fun facts about Wshington state:
Estimated at 8.9% of income, Washington's state/local tax burden percentage ranks 35th highest nationally, below the national average of 9.7%. Washington taxpayers pay $4,334 per capita in state and local taxes.
Washington ranks 9th in the Tax Foundation's State Business Tax Climate Index. The Index compares the states in five areas of taxation that impact business: corporate taxes; individual income taxes; sales taxes; unemployment insurance taxes; and taxes on property, including residential and commercial property. Neighboring states ranked as follows: Idaho (18th), Oregon (14th) and California (48th).
Washington levies no state personal income taxes, joining Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming as the only other states not to do so.
Washington's corporate tax structure contains no corporate income tax. Nevada, Texas and Wyoming are the only other states that do not levy corporate income taxes. However, Washington levies the nation's oldest gross receipts tax, the Business and Occupations (B&O) Tax, first instituted in 1933. Washington, Texas, Ohio, Michigan and Delaware are the only states to levy economy-wide gross receipts taxes.
Washington levies a 6.5% general sales or use tax on consumers, slightly above the national median of 6%. In 2006, state and local governments combined collected $1,868 per capita in general sales taxes, which ranks the highest in the nation. Washington's gasoline tax stands at 37.5 cents per gallon, which ranks 3rd highest nationally. Washington's cigarette tax stands at $2.025 per pack of twenty and ranks 8th highest nationally. The sales tax was adopted in 1933, the gasoline tax in 1921 and the cigarette tax in 1935.
Washington is one of the 37 states that collect property taxes at both the state and local levels. As in most states, local governments collect the majority of property taxes. Washington's localities collected $835.25 per capita in property taxes in fiscal year 2006, which is the latest year the Census Bureau published state-by-state property tax collections. At the state level, Washington collects more property taxes than most states do. In FY 2006, Washington collected $257.73 per capita, bringing its combined state/local property taxes to $1,092.98 per capita, which ranks 25th highest nationally.
Washington taxpayers receive less federal funding per dollar of federal taxes paid than the average state. Per dollar of Federal tax collected in 2005, Washington citizens received approximately $0.88 in the way of federal spending. This ranks the state 38th highest nationally and represents a decline from 1995, when Washington received $0.97 per dollar of taxes in federal spending (ranked 31st nationally). Neighboring states and the federal spending received per dollar of federal taxes collected were: Idaho ($1.21) and Oregon ($0.93).The Facts on Washington's Tax Climate
The sales tax is a very regressive tax. Why should ordinary people of Washington take the hit disproportionately so that Microsoft can be let off the hook for what is basically equivalent to offshoring?
The Washington state sales tax is 6.5%, only a tad higher than the national average. Washington does have both state and local property taxes - and Microsoft owns ten million square feet of office space and leases five million more.
This is clearly is bad for the individual geek who makes their living selling simple custom programs that do only what the user wants/needs and nothing that they don't, unlike Microsoft omnibus packages. It's a case of government by large corporation over the individual if this passes.
Microsoft employs 40,000 people around Puget Sound.
It owns about 10 million square feet of office space up that way and leases five million more. Facts About Microsoft
The median family income in Redmond itself was $88,000 in 2008 and the median value of a house or condo $496,000. Redmond, Washington
"All politics is local."
The guy cutting the grass or tending the plants on the Microsoft campus is another vote for maintaining the status quo - and there are thousands and tens of thousands of others like him the geek in his basement will never be able to reach.
The only real answer is to market your product through an organization that can reap the same benefits of size, visibility and financial strength as the big boys.
Microsoft has cut a deal with China Construction Bank, the second largest bank in the world [by market capitalization.]
Microsoft China on March 23 inked a MoU with China Construction Bank, the nation's biggest real estate and mortgage lender, on strategic cooperation.
Under the MoU, both sides will build a new generation online banking IE browser on the base of Windows Internet Explorer. In addition, they will jointly solve problems regarding to certificate management, browser safety monitor system allocation, multi-language version and etc. The new generation USB Key will own non-clink consumer installment function.
CCB expects to top China's online banking market and the cooperation with Microsoft will help improve its online banking service further, said Fan Yifei, vice president of the bank. Microsoft will continue boosting China's online banking market, pointed out Simon L. K. Leung, chairman and president of the company for the Greater China region.
Actually, it is not the first time for the Chinese bank to cooperate with Microsoft. In order to promote online banking software, Microsoft cooperated with a list of commercial banks in China before the launch of Windows 7 and CCB is one of the latter.
CCB has 16,000 domestic branches, and has expanded overseas to Singapore, Frankfurt, Johannesburg, Tokyo and Seoul. In June 2009, CCB opened its New York Branch and a wholly-owned subsidiary in London.
These numbers are bogus. They include products made abroad by nominally American companies. All the cars produced by GM in China are counted as part of this.
So what are the numbers for manufacturing and asssembly in the US by companies which are wholly or in part foreign owned?
Toyota, for example, currently employs about 30,000 industrial workers in in Alabama, Indiana, Texas and West Virginia, with a new plant slated for construction in Mississippi. The car in front is still a Toyota
There are three main package managers, one of which will work with almost any distro you choose. I know - half the people in the world can't decide what color socks to wear today, so they only buy black socks, or white socks. Some of the rest of us buy both black and white, and mix and match according to mood. Some daring individuals actually buy COLORFUL socks, and manage to keep up with the pairs. The point is, not everyone is retarded.
Will every package manager have every app - and will every app be installed in the same state?
Will the non technical end user be presented with an attractive and fully functional GUI for the package manager?
The user who is accustomed to application X version Y at work will - quite sensibly - want application X version Y at home.
...when I look at something like this is why does it has to look so ugly and off balance?
The second is how do I fight my way to work and back in wind and rain and snow? On streets with bone-breaking potholes only a Jeep Cherokee could love.
The last thing I need is for people to walk into my house and see me sitting on my couch wearing some goofy looking glasses.
But they will ooh and ahh when they first see your new home theater set-up.
Hear the muscular eight channel surround sound audio. Test the recliner lounge seating. The glasses are simply part of the theatrical experience - and they will give them a try.
Now with current interpretation of the interstate commerce clause which states "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes" they think that means education funds, farm subsidies, healthcare, any power they will ever want they can have because of a Supreme Court that has it head fully engulfed by its ass. Whether you agree with healthcare or not. You have to know that the way in which the US federal government is coming by these powers is utter bullshit.
The old South stood steadfast against federal funding of a canal across the Appalachins. New York financed the Erie on its own and profoundly shifted the political, economic and technological balance of power to the North and West.
The federal government began using land grants to encourage western homesteaders, endow state-owned "agricultural" colleges and fund the construction of privately owned transcontinental railroads in 1862. Railroad land grants
Direct support of agricutural experimental stations and rural Cooperative Extension programs would evolve from there.
Direct subsidies to farmers begins in the 1920s - with Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover.
about the time the geek discovered that compiling from source can be a royal pain in the butt - and that a solution had to be found for the non-technical end user.
there remains the problem of programs that aren't packaged for your distribution - and the fragmentation of Linux into 200 or so odd distros can make OSX and Windows seem like models of shining sanity.
Photoshop currently sells at a "lightweight" $700. How many photos would I have to edit to make that cost effective? It entered the land of exclusive pro tool years ago.
Photoshop isn't a tool for the point and click digital photographer with his $250 Canon.
But in the "prosumer" market you can begin by spending $1,000 on a camera body alone. Cost effective to the amateur photographer at this level translates into less time spend in the digital darkroom.
He may also make the occasional sale at $50 to $100.
Photoshop currently sells at a "lightweight" $700. How many photos would I have to edit to make that cost effective?
That would depend on your talent, experience, reputation and resources as a photographer - and how well you understand the market for your work. But you could recover the cost of Photoshop in a dozen or so small sales, at say, $50 to $100 each.
When national security laws are used to cover-up the immoral actions of high-level personnel, Wikileaks *IS* above the law
The essence of principled civil disobedience is that you accept the consequences of your actions.
You do not proclaim yourself to be above the law.
If only because for the first - and quite possibly the last - time in your life, your words will be taken at face value.
Where there is no respect for law, the dissident - the inconvenient - the unwelcome - the dangerous - simply disappear. What you have is government by the Mafia. The Ku Klux Klan. The Death Squad.
Slashdot Mirror
Does the PS3's license agreement say that Sony can add or remove features at will? If so, it seems like all the ranting and noise about a lawsuit is for naught.
The first generation PS3's had full hardware support for PS2 games - as support for the PS2 gamer was slowly extinguished in later versions of the console, do you recall any successful class action lawsuits there?
Three words a conservative judge does not want to hear are "class action lawsuit."
If your ultimate target is a decision in the federal system you are going to have to define and limit your class effectively, allege and prove more than $5,000,000 in damages.
A PC is a tool and like all tools, works best with the fewest necessary peripheries. IT guys recognize this. They have no use for Bob and they feel (perhaps rightly) that their users should have no use for Bob and Bob like programs bring no real value.
A tool works best when it is designed for its users.
The user who found value in BOB or Clippy was not the geek in IT - and not the poster to Slashdot.
He won't be attracted to the GIMP by its name or its GUI - whatever horsepower is to found underneath.
But he will find a welcoming environment in Second Life - and may just discover that his college or university has an outpost there: Academic Organizations in Second Life.
How can they sell something with a certain set of features and then just take it away? I know, it didn't really work all that well....
1 Because the feature was never advertised and never of interest to the PS3's core market of console gamers?
2 Because the combination of Internet enabled HD video game console + Blu Ray player is beginning to look like a winner?
God of War III is the number one best seller in console video games at Amazon.com. It's a Sony product and a PS3 "exclusive."
The only way to make money in mass market consumer technologies is in mass market consumer sales. "Feel Good" doesn't pay the bills.
The BBC has co-production and distribution agreements with companies all over the world. That translates directly into bigger budgets, production on locations abroad, recruitment of A-list talents, and so on.
Brighton, England--February 22, 2010-- MASTERPIECE on PBS and BBC Worldwide Sales and Distribution, Americas have announced a major co-production deal that includes a new production, with the BBC, of Upstairs Downstairs--one of the most-loved and honored television series of all time. Upstairs Downstairs will air in the U.S. in 2011 as part of MASTERPIECE 's 40th anniversary season on PBS.
The deal also includes Sherlock, a 21st-century spin on Arthur Conan Doyle's classic Sherlock Holmes novels, and three Aurelio Zen mysteries, adapted from the best-selling novels by Michael Dibden set in Italy.
Jean Marsh, who will reprise her role in the new three-part series as Rose, the parlor maid. Dame Eileen Atkins, the co-creator of the original program, will also star. Screenwriter Heidi Thomas (Cranford) is setting the new Upstairs Downstairs in the same house at 165 Eaton Place in 1936, during the period leading up to World War II.
The thrilling new Sherlock series is a fast-paced, witty take on the legendary crime drama, now set in present day London and starring Benedict Cumberbatch (Atonement, The Last Enemy) as the eponymous detective. Martin Freeman (The Office UK, Hot Fuzz) plays his loyal friend, Doctor John Watson, and Rupert Graves (God on Trial, The Forsyte Saga) is Inspector Lestrade. Co-created by Steven Moffat (Doctor Who, Coupling, Jekyll) and Mark Gatiss (The League of Gentlemen, Crooked House), the iconic details from Arthur Conan Doyle's original books remain: same address, same names--and somewhere out there, Moriarty is waiting.
Rufus Sewell (The Eleventh Hour, Middlemarch, John Adams) will star as Italian detective Aurelio Zen in three episodes based on the popular mysteries by Michael Dibden. The series is being shot on location in Italy by Left Bank Pictures, the production company behind the acclaimed Wallander television series.
MASTERPIECE AND BBC WORLDWIDE ANNOUNCE DRAMA CO-PRODUCTIONS, INCLUDING NEW UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS
For the terminally clueless(no pun intended), for whom peripheral hookup is a bit daunting, there would be nothing stopping you from charging a touch more and shipping a whole netbook. Even full x86 netbooks can be found at ~$200 with fair frequency, and nasty little PDA-in-a-netbook's-body offerings have been under $100 for a while now
People will want to do their bankng on the go. They will not tolerate carrying another single-purpose gadget.
The answer is, and always will be, because software is math.
Patents are traditionally awarded to the man who sees a problem and find a creative and practical solution that has eluded everyone else who began with the same knowledge and resources.
Math and logic are simply tools - as accessible to the machinist as they are to the programmer.
There was so much that was grim, bloody and sordid about the creation of new and special weapons to kill people that I searched for comic relief.
The anthropologists in O.S.S. were asked to come up with some tabu that was uniquely Japanese, something to which only that race was sensitive. I was told the answer was bowel elimination. A Japanes thought nothing of urinating in public, but he held defecation to be a very secret, shameful thing. A Japanese soldier, even in jungle fighting, even at great risk, would seek a private place to defecate. Here was my comic relief.
I had a group of chemists work out a skatol compound, a liquid which duplicated the revolting odor of a very loose bowel movement. It left no doubt in anyone's mind as to what it was. We put this obnoxious chemical in collapsible tubes, and I named it, "Who? Me?" The tubes were flown over the hump to Chungking and distributed to children in Japanese-occupied cities Peiping, Shanghai, Canton, etc.
When a Japanese officer, preferably of high rank, came waling down the crowded sidewalk, the little Chinese boys and girls would slip up behind him and squirt a shot of "Who? Me?" at his trouser seat. As a sort of extra dividend, our chemical was insoluble in soap and water, but very soluble in dry-cleaner's fluids, so, when sent for cleaning, the contaminated uniform endowed all the clothing in the batch with its offense.
"Who? Me?" was no world-shaking new development,but it cost the Japanese a world of "face."
Sometimes a joke can go too far.
A small supply of "Who? Me?" tubes, which were our original test samples, began to disappear. I had the cabinet locked. The lock was picked, which was not at all surprising, since we instructed all of our saboteurs in the art of picking open all makes of locks and door latches. With the help of an assistant I booby-trapped the locker by having a tube of "Who? Me? 7 ' filled under such an aerosol pressure, that when the cabinet door was opened it would spray the thief, causing him to lose both his self-composure and his anonymity. That stopped all the monkey business but the culprit, so easily identified, was too highly placed to be scolded.
If MS refuses to pay their fair share of taxes (after all, they enjoy the benefits of the roads, police, fire, and other services that are supported by these taxes, correct?
How many of those services are paid out of local property taxes?
Microsoft owns or leases 15 million square feet of office space in the Puget Sound region. It employs 40,000 people - and pays them well enough so that the median value of a single family home in Redmond is $500,000.
Yeah, the 'moral dilemma' is kinda silly. But why stop at curing colourblindness? When can I get my IR and UV vision?
Here is a tale from one of the great Now-It-Can-Told memoirs of World War I:
Of Spies &
Stratagems by Stanley P. Lovell
Lovell was the director of R&D for the OSS. The man who became Bill Donovan's Professor Moriarty. You'll find no better introduction to the real world of spy tech than here.
A most important field of deception and concealment concerned the landing of spies and saboteurs on enemy occupied coastlines, and at the exact spot where he or she would be met by friendly personnel from the underground organizations. This proved to be a most difficult problem for us to solve. Such landings had to be made on nights with no moon.
Early in the war fixed lights and blinkers were used on the shore to mark the rendezvous, but enemy airplanes and sur face vessels often spotted them. Many an agent and his reception committee of resistance fighters were surrounded, picked up and summarily shot.
The ideal shore signal to guide the O.S.S. agent to the selected place was an ultra-violet beacon. A small UV bulb, powered by a single dry-cell battery, would flash intermittently for almost a year. The difficulty arose when we found that even a person with superior eyesight could pick out the ultra-violet signal in the blackness of night only from a distressingly short range. I could not detect it at all beyond one hundred feet. I was about to abandon the UV system of landing signal as worthless, when a surgeon specializing in cataract
removals told me by chance that patients who had undergone that operation had extraordinary sensitivity to ultra-violet light. We asked for volunteers and tested several people whose cataracts had been removed. To our astonishment we found that they could see and pinpoint the little, flashing ultra
violet light from over a mile away, whereas the rest of us could
see nothing but inky blackness.
Brave, elderly people, so selected, guided our operators
infallibly to these normally invisible rendezvous. I am certain
the Germans and the Japanese never had the faintest idea of
how it was done.
Yeah finding a whole bunch of welders is one thing. Finding technically training individuals in a whole other state (or asking your entire workforce to move to Alabama) is something else.
The distance from Seattle to Vancouver BC is 141 miles.
2) Have sensible punishments for breaking the AUP. (No cops, no expulsions. Detention sure, suspension/parental notification, if you have to.)
Parental notification is essential.
Parents will go nuclear when they discover that you have been covering up for their kids when were caught surfing for porn.
Nothing can be so bad that someone else calling the cops won't make worse. You do not have the luxury of ignoring state and federal law.
3) Leave the net _wide open_ for each student.
It isn't going to happen. Not in the public school. Not in the evangelical Protestant or Catholic private school. Not in any school under the supervision of a state board of education. Not in any school receiving federal funding.
Yes, this means kids might get exposed to hardcore porn from time to time. Big f'in deal. For me the net wasn't around and I saw good ol' VHS tapes
Sold over or under the counter?
There has always been a world of difference between porn as a mass-market product and the truly hardcore stuff.
Fortunately my little corporation isn't in Washington. I know first hand that there are many states more conducive to small business.
Fun facts about Wshington state:
Estimated at 8.9% of income, Washington's state/local tax burden percentage ranks 35th highest nationally, below the national average of 9.7%. Washington taxpayers pay $4,334 per capita in state and local taxes.
Washington ranks 9th in the Tax Foundation's State Business Tax Climate Index. The Index compares the states in five areas of taxation that impact business: corporate taxes; individual income taxes; sales taxes; unemployment insurance taxes; and taxes on property, including residential and commercial property. Neighboring states ranked as follows: Idaho (18th), Oregon (14th) and California (48th).
Washington levies no state personal income taxes, joining Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming as the only other states not to do so.
Washington's corporate tax structure contains no corporate income tax. Nevada, Texas and Wyoming are the only other states that do not levy corporate income taxes. However, Washington levies the nation's oldest gross receipts tax, the Business and Occupations (B&O) Tax, first instituted in 1933. Washington, Texas, Ohio, Michigan and Delaware are the only states to levy economy-wide gross receipts taxes.
Washington levies a 6.5% general sales or use tax on consumers, slightly above the national median of 6%. In 2006, state and local governments combined collected $1,868 per capita in general sales taxes, which ranks the highest in the nation. Washington's gasoline tax stands at 37.5 cents per gallon, which ranks 3rd highest nationally. Washington's cigarette tax stands at $2.025 per pack of twenty and ranks 8th highest nationally. The sales tax was adopted in 1933, the gasoline tax in 1921 and the cigarette tax in 1935.
Washington is one of the 37 states that collect property taxes at both the state and local levels. As in most states, local governments collect the majority of property taxes. Washington's localities collected $835.25 per capita in property taxes in fiscal year 2006, which is the latest year the Census Bureau published state-by-state property tax collections. At the state level, Washington collects more property taxes than most states do. In FY 2006, Washington collected $257.73 per capita, bringing its combined state/local property taxes to $1,092.98 per capita, which ranks 25th highest nationally.
Washington taxpayers receive less federal funding per dollar of federal taxes paid than the average state. Per dollar of Federal tax collected in 2005, Washington citizens received approximately $0.88 in the way of federal spending. This ranks the state 38th highest nationally and represents a decline from 1995, when Washington received $0.97 per dollar of taxes in federal spending (ranked 31st nationally). Neighboring states and the federal spending received per dollar of federal taxes collected were: Idaho ($1.21) and Oregon ($0.93). The Facts on Washington's Tax Climate
The sales tax is a very regressive tax. Why should ordinary people of Washington take the hit disproportionately so that Microsoft can be let off the hook for what is basically equivalent to offshoring?
The Washington state sales tax is 6.5%, only a tad higher than the national average. Washington does have both state and local property taxes - and Microsoft owns ten million square feet of office space and leases five million more.
This is clearly is bad for the individual geek who makes their living selling simple custom programs that do only what the user wants/needs and nothing that they don't, unlike Microsoft omnibus packages. It's a case of government by large corporation over the individual if this passes.
Microsoft employs 40,000 people around Puget Sound.
It owns about 10 million square feet of office space up that way and leases five million more. Facts About Microsoft
The median family income in Redmond itself was $88,000 in 2008 and the median value of a house or condo $496,000. Redmond, Washington
"All politics is local."
The guy cutting the grass or tending the plants on the Microsoft campus is another vote for maintaining the status quo - and there are thousands and tens of thousands of others like him the geek in his basement will never be able to reach.
The only real answer is to market your product through an organization that can reap the same benefits of size, visibility and financial strength as the big boys.
Microsoft has cut a deal with China Construction Bank, the second largest bank in the world [by market capitalization.]
Microsoft China on March 23 inked a MoU with China Construction Bank, the nation's biggest real estate and mortgage lender, on strategic cooperation.
Under the MoU, both sides will build a new generation online banking IE browser on the base of Windows Internet Explorer. In addition, they will jointly solve problems regarding to certificate management, browser safety monitor system allocation, multi-language version and etc. The new generation USB Key will own non-clink consumer installment function.
CCB expects to top China's online banking market and the cooperation with Microsoft will help improve its online banking service further, said Fan Yifei, vice president of the bank. Microsoft will continue boosting China's online banking market, pointed out Simon L. K. Leung, chairman and president of the company for the Greater China region.
Actually, it is not the first time for the Chinese bank to cooperate with Microsoft. In order to promote online banking software, Microsoft cooperated with a list of commercial banks in China before the launch of Windows 7 and CCB is one of the latter.
Microsoft, CCB to Build Special IE Browser
CCB has 16,000 domestic branches, and has expanded overseas to Singapore, Frankfurt, Johannesburg, Tokyo and Seoul. In June 2009, CCB opened its New York Branch and a wholly-owned subsidiary in London.
These numbers are bogus. They include products made abroad by nominally American companies. All the cars produced by GM in China are counted as part of this.
So what are the numbers for manufacturing and asssembly in the US by companies which are wholly or in part foreign owned?
Toyota, for example, currently employs about 30,000 industrial workers in in Alabama, Indiana, Texas and West Virginia, with a new plant slated for construction in Mississippi. The car in front is still a Toyota
There are three main package managers, one of which will work with almost any distro you choose.
I know - half the people in the world can't decide what color socks to wear today, so they only buy black socks, or white socks. Some of the rest of us buy both black and white, and mix and match according to mood. Some daring individuals actually buy COLORFUL socks, and manage to keep up with the pairs.
The point is, not everyone is retarded.
Will every package manager have every app - and will every app be installed in the same state?
Will the non technical end user be presented with an attractive and fully functional GUI for the package manager?
The user who is accustomed to application X version Y at work will - quite sensibly - want application X version Y at home.
...when I look at something like this is why does it has to look so ugly and off balance?
The second is how do I fight my way to work and back in wind and rain and snow? On streets with bone-breaking potholes only a Jeep Cherokee could love.
The last thing I need is for people to walk into my house and see me sitting on my couch wearing some goofy looking glasses.
But they will ooh and ahh when they first see your new home theater set-up.
Hear the muscular eight channel surround sound audio. Test the recliner lounge seating. The glasses are simply part of the theatrical experience - and they will give them a try.
Now with current interpretation of the interstate commerce clause which states "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes" they think that means education funds, farm subsidies, healthcare, any power they will ever want they can have because of a Supreme Court that has it head fully engulfed by its ass. Whether you agree with healthcare or not. You have to know that the way in which the US federal government is coming by these powers is utter bullshit.
The old South stood steadfast against federal funding of a canal across the Appalachins. New York financed the Erie on its own and profoundly shifted the political, economic and technological balance of power to the North and West.
The federal government began using land grants to encourage western homesteaders, endow state-owned "agricultural" colleges and fund the construction of privately owned transcontinental railroads in 1862. Railroad land grants
Direct support of agricutural experimental stations and rural Cooperative Extension programs would evolve from there.
Direct subsidies to farmers begins in the 1920s - with Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover.
About time..how long has Linux been doing this?
about the time the geek discovered that compiling from source can be a royal pain in the butt -
and that a solution had to be found for the non-technical end user.
there remains the problem of programs that aren't packaged for your distribution - and the fragmentation of Linux into 200 or so odd distros can make OSX and Windows seem like models of shining sanity.
Photoshop currently sells at a "lightweight" $700. How many photos would I have to edit to make that cost effective? It entered the land of exclusive pro tool years ago.
Photoshop isn't a tool for the point and click digital photographer with his $250 Canon.
But in the "prosumer" market you can begin by spending $1,000 on a camera body alone. Cost effective to the amateur photographer at this level translates into less time spend in the digital darkroom.
He may also make the occasional sale at $50 to $100.
Photoshop currently sells at a "lightweight" $700. How many photos would I have to edit to make that cost effective?
That would depend on your talent, experience, reputation and resources as a photographer - and how well you understand the market for your work. But you could recover the cost of Photoshop in a dozen or so small sales, at say, $50 to $100 each.
When national security laws are used to cover-up the immoral actions of high-level personnel, Wikileaks *IS* above the law
The essence of principled civil disobedience is that you accept the consequences of your actions.
You do not proclaim yourself to be above the law.
If only because for the first - and quite possibly the last - time in your life, your words will be taken at face value.
Where there is no respect for law, the dissident - the inconvenient - the unwelcome - the dangerous - simply disappear. What you have is government by the Mafia. The Ku Klux Klan. The Death Squad.