> That's way less than they anticipated. Only 5 million out of > 100 knocked me flat.
Actually, no matter what the marketdroids SAY they expected, I'd bet that is EXACTLY what the suits HOPED for: lots of publicity with much less cash outlay than what it could have cost them.
No doubt, the arrangement called for Pepsi to pay for the songs that were redeemed by the deadline, not the whole 100 million. Otherwise, why have a deadline at all? They probably had some people work the numbers as to how much "brand awareness" they would build vs. the number so songs they'd likely have to pay for. It's like when CompUSA sells memory at $40 for 256MB, with a $30 mail-in rebate. They're counting on most people being lazy or forgetful and not cashing in the rebate.
Five percent.... I bet that's pretty close to the number of people who actually redeem mail-in rebates too.
Myself, I had a stack of ten or so codes, sitting on my desk, that I didn't get around to using until yesterday and today. If I had forgotten the deadline, or been busy and put it off, those codes would have expired tomorrow.
Well, I can't speak for any company or development group. But if *I* came up with some bit of code that was nifty and patentable; my concern wouldn't be about fscking with j. random hobbiest or home user. I WOULD want to restrict access only to those aforementioned corporate interests.... the meat farmers, the weapons manufacturers, police and government agencies, and the like. Those are the very sorts for whom license compliance is a big issue, and who can't get away with downloading and using, rights free, some illicit binary from some ex-soviet-block country.
*M*Y ideal license would function mostly identically to the GPL, but only for private, non-commercial, non-government use. And the author would retain veto power (and the right to demand a fee, or a share of the gross), should some corporate interest decide they want to appropriate. and profit from, it.
If you have the money to muddle through the patent process in the first place; you probably have enough extra money to buy an hour or two of a copyright/contract lawyer's time, give him a copy of the GPL, and instruct him to: "write a license that functions exactly like the GPL, in every way, except that it allows me to retain full control over my patents.".
It's not like the GPL is the holy writ or anything. It's just a software license. And if it doesn't fit your needs, just use a different one.
AIM, YIM, and the like should still be disallowed.
I've worked in an environment where we were pretty scattered and reliant on IM too. But we had a private IRC server set up on-site, and behind our firewall. AIM, YIM, and so on, route their messages through the 'net at large, and through servers owned by AOL, Yahoo, and so on. That's a very BAD thing if there's even a CHANCE that you'll pass along code snippets or discuss confidential company information.
It's not about how everyone MUST learn everything "the hard way". It's about people who are unwilling to learn AT ALL. There is nothing at all dishonorable about taking a class, or if you do go it yourself, asking for help if there's something you're just not getting. (I am NOT one of those crusty old RTFM types... unless it's a truly and obnoxiously stupid question.) It's the people who are unwilling to make the effort I have no respect for.
And besides, I defy you to tell me with a straight face that shifting TSRs around memory segments with LH, fucking around with himem.sys and emm386, diagnosing IRQ conflicts, and all that other shit with which I was intimately familiar before my last wintel finally died, is REALLY significantly easier than configuring X11 on linux. *I* just happened to put in the effort to learn both; rather than just learning one skill and saying: "that's enough".
> No one had to show me how to do it, I figured stuff > out on my own. >... > I've taught myself almost everything I know by trial > and error and just intuitively figuring things out,
When I wanted to know how to use my family's first computer (an Apple ][+), this is EXACTLY how I learned. No one sat down and held my hand. My dad made one copy of the system master disk for me, pointed to the stack of manuals on the bookshelf, and told me to learn how to use the thing. And, at the age of six, I tought myself how to use that Apple ][+, and, over the next few years, how to program pretty well in Apple BASIC (and a bit of 6504 assembler).
When we got a C64 to go along with the Apple, I taught myself the same way (and formed a love/hate relationship with sprites).
Ditto, when we got out first Macintosh.
Likewise, when we got our wintel.
When I went off to college, I took the 486 with me, becoming temporarily Mac-less. There, I was first introduced to Unix (SunOS, Irix, and AIX mostly). The CS department's sysadmin was one of those scruffy old "RTFM" types. And most of the programming classes assumed you already had a working knowledge of Unix. So there was no one to hold my hand through the "learning how to use Unix" process, either. Mostly, I poked around in/usr/bin/, read man pages, and played with anything that looked interesting.
And after windows finally ate one-lab-report-too-many, I bought a blank CD-R from the campus bookstore, had our sysadmin burn me a copy of slackware's latest, went back to my dorm, and (yes, after some trial and error in getting it installed and running properly) wiped microsoft out of my life. You know how I learned Linux? The exact way you describe yourself learning windows, and the exact way I learned every other OS.
And when the public beta of Mac OS X (my current primary OS) came out (and, truth be told, I had a few burned copies of the developers' previews too), I got a copy immediately. And I "intuitively figured things out" "on my own" and "by trial and error".
See, the thing is that I am *gasp* WILLING TO LEARN NEW THINGS. There is no reason in the world why *I* can learn new things, and others can't. beyond plain and simple apathy, laziness, and unwillingness to learn.
The parent has a good point. Apple should have looked at the example set by deCSS.
Before the MPAA started harassing "DVD-Jon" and DMCA-ing everyone who so much as mentioned the name deCSS in public; only a small handful of linux nerds had even heard of the thing, much less built and compiled it into media players for their own machines. No big deal. It was just a toy for extreme hobbyists.
After the MPAA tried to take deCSS out, every self-righteous geek on the 'net made sure to get a copy. And many of them made it their mission to spread it further, and more mirrors than I could guess popped up. Somewhere *I* still have a copy of deCSS embedded into a webpage banner in some way that I don't even remember how to extract it.
So what was PlayFair before Apple DMCA'd sourceforge? Another cute toy that was only of any use to someone who had already BOUGHT the song from ITMS in the first place. It's not like anybody hacked a backdoor into ITMS itself and made the entire library free to the 'net. Now, there are half a dozen mirrors in this/. article alone. And more are coming. And no doubt that work on PlayFair will continue, with much-increased enthusiasm once it is hosted somewhere outside US borders.
It reminds me of a Douglas Adams quote.... about how while humans are unique in being the only species capable of learning from the mistakes of others, we are remarkably disinclined to actually do so.
> They went there, because they're in the military, and in the > military you follow orders that your commander gives you.
Don't forget, recent efforts on the part of congress and the selective service to the contrary, there is still no draft in the US, nor has there been for thirty years or so.
Every single one of those people VOLUNTEERED to go barge into another country and murder brown people in the name of halliburton's and betchel's share prices.
... and absolute "no"'s and "nevers"'s tend to be easily proven wrong.
Don't think that anyone should ever free ride just because he has that (D) next to his name on the congressional roster.
I seem to recall quite well that one of the big muckety-mucks amongst congress' democrats turned out to have been a klansman, something which should disqualify anyone, wether they put the (R) *or* the (D) after their name, from ever holding any public office. As I recall, this flap was dug up after Trent Lott got called to task on his praise for strom thurmond's segregationist politics. In fact, as I recall from a few of his bios, when he finally had the good grace to die, thurmond himself was a registered democrat at one point.
You'd do better to replace "democrat" with "liberal" in much of your post, as the two do not always (or perhaps even often, given the dems tendancy to veer to the right and be all buddy-buddy with the reps, of late) coincide. *I*, for example, could walk down to the post office, fill out a new voter registration card, and be a registered republican by the end of the day. But few people woulf ever mistake me for a conservative.
> all of your time - 24/7 - belongs to the university. In > principle, an invention you create on the weekends is owned > by them
I don't know what state you're in, but in some, employment clauses like that are illegal and unenforcable. In fact, every time I've been hired at a tech job here in California, at contract time there was a seperate page to sign explicitly saying that such clauses were illegal and unenforcable and that any clauses like that in the rest of the contract that said so were null and void.
(I'm not sure why they did it THAT way, instead of just removing said clauses from the rest of the contract. My guess is that the court ruleings rendering such clauses illegal were fairly recent, and nobody had gone through the bother of sorting through all of the legal gunk in all the various employment contract and writing out the relevant passages. But I may be wrong)
What bioware PROMISED, while NWN was under development, was a simultaneous release of both the Mac and PC versions (in the same box even) of a COMPLETE game. And when they released the PC version (with no Mac version), they promised Mac users that they could buy the pc version, and that a Mac binary would be released shortly later (ala Quake 3).
What bioware DELIVERED was a seperate Mac version almost two years late. They delivered a crippled and incomplete game that lacked the level-builder toolkit and the expansion. And they expected to charge full-price for a game that lacked said toolkit, when the pc version WITH toolkit AND expansion is selling for $30.
Oh, and the Mac users who bought the pc version, under the belief that bioware would live up to their promise when the Mac version slipped the FIRST time? They got shafted, without so much as even a rebate or refund from bioware. If they want to play NWN, they have to buy it AGAIN, at full price.
If Halo was still being prodeced by an independent Bungie, and actually included all of the features we were promised at MacWorld, way back when; *I* would happily plonk down the $50 for it.
Instead, we get a Halo that is produced by microsoft, to whom bungiee whored themselves out. We get a halo that is a crappy port of a console game. We get a Halo that has been gutted of almost all of the features that would have made it uber-cool must-have. We get a Halo that has been turned into just another mediocre FPS.
No way in HELL I'd pay even a penny for the damn thing. Of course, I don't even consider it worth the waste of bandwidth to download either. But if I DID want to play a half-assed imitation of Halo, I would have no moral qualms about DLing the thing.
NOTE TO GAME DEVELOPERS: Keep faith with your customers, keep the promises you make; and people will happily buy your products. Betray us, break your promises; and you piss people off and lose customers. Maybe it's not taught in business 101, but it's sure taught in human nature 101. See also: the other poster's remarks about what was promised vs. what was delivered WRT/ the Mac (and linux) version of Neverwinter Nights.
> people accepting joke $3 bills with Bill Clinton on them.
... and anyone stupid enough to actually accept that thing as cash *DESERVES* to be ripped off to the tune of FAR more than $3.
> We need to keep the look of our currency intact if we want a
> stable currency system.
Not really. Many other nations, with quite stable currencies, revamp the look of their banknotes every so often, simply as a matter of course. It is the US that is the "odd man out" for having ours look so similar for so long.
As an example that's coming up sooner than later; do you really think that when Elisibeth II dies, and every banknote and coin in the commonwealth is redone to feature Charles, that the new LOOK of the money is going to destablize the currencies of every (or any, for that matter) member?
> Then I started noticing how irritating it was when people > who were specialized in other fields - e.g. medicine, car > mechanics - did the same thing to me.
Even as a non-specialist, it is assumed and expected that I will know and apply the basics of both of said fields, with at least a minimum of competentcy.
I don't, for example, need a mechanic to tell me that I have to put gas in my car to make it run. Nor do I require his aid to check and change my oil, change a tire, and so on. As the owner of a car, it is assumed that I have at least these minimum skills.
I don't run to my doctor for every little sniffle; 95% of the time, I just drink a shot of NyQuill, go to bed early, and sleep off whatever ails me. Nor do I need him to bandage every little cut and bruise for me. And if I happen across someone who needs it, *I*, a non-doctor, am certified to administer CPR. Hell, I could probably even dredge up enough recall from my first-aid merit badge to splint a broken bone or treat someone for shock!
In neither of these examples is the knowledge I mentioned the exclusive territory of specialistd. They are just the very basic competentcies that it is assumed that as functioning and responsible car owners, or functioning and responsible humen beings, we will all know.
But it seems to be a very frusterating and to-oft recurring feature of the computer/IT industry thar lusers will remain willfully ignorant of even the very basics of how to operate and maintain that expensive and complicated technology that they rely upon; sometimes as much or more than their car. And I don't think it's unreasonable at all to be frusterated when they continue to be so willfully ignorant.
> I know I don't bother picking up if there's no caller
Not only do I not bother to answer if they block callerID, if they DO leave a message, I delete it without bothering to listen.
I figure if a caller is so rude as to attempt to deny me the choice as to wether or not he deserves my time, then he probably doesn't deserve a second my time in the first place. Or if said caller is so convinced that I wouldn't want to talk to him, and he has to be decietful and hit *67, then he's probably right, and I DON'T want to talk to the little sneak.
It works great too... Even on the landline, I hardly ever have to hear a telemarketer's pitch (even though they're so rude as to call YOU, they don't want you to be able to call THEM, so they almost always block callerID). And it's absolutely WONDERFUL for not having to talk to that creepy, annoying, 'ex who wouldn't leave me alone for the longest time.
One of my housemates is still geeky enough to (and still has the dotcom job to be able to afford to) take the whole household out to see Martix: Revolutions on the Metreon's IMAX screen for the midnight, opening night (morning?), showing. I sure appreciated it, and didn't turn down the opportunity. But, many, Many, MANY, times throughout the course of the night; I thought to myself: "The ticket price should include the right to beat up one trenchcoat-wearing dork".
I've already been told not to make plans for wednesday night. So while I'll, no doubt, greatly enjoy seeing ROTK; I'll also, no doubt, spend a good portion of the night desperately resisting the urge to throttle selected RenFair/SCA rejects.
No wonder most of my newer friends are more from the artsy-fartsy crowd than the geek crowd. They may smell bad from smoking too much. But at least I won't catch them making lightsaber or warp drive noises anytime soon.
lol yes silly ac, but the first rule of computer secutity is that if the "bad guy" has physical access to the machine, the game's over. The "good guys" lose, and the "bad guys" win.
If I've used my 1337 cat-burgular skills to break into Exodus, and actually have access to the machine itself; I'm not going to waste time useing my 1337 hacking skills or my (presumably) equally-1337 CD of hacking tools. I'll simply crack open the machine, rip out the drive, take it home, and read the data I want at my leisure.
> Do you also believe your local library should stock > Playboy on the shelves with Popular Science?
Have you looked at an issue of Playboy lately?
The "pictures of naked girls" parts of the magazine take up only a VERY small portion of the whole. And as far as nudie pictures go, they're QUITE tame compared to the bulk of the rest of the "nudie magazine" rack (pun unintended). And let's not even get STARTED compareing them to the bulk of 'net porn. Playboy's pictorals are no more, and sometimes less, risque than the nudes you'll find in the art/photography section of the library.
And when you come right down to it, there's some damn good writing in Playboy. I'm not going to lie, and say that I "JUST read the articles". But I *do* ALSO read the articles. Many of them are very good, and quite worthy of being in a library.
... where the hoops you have to go through to own a gun make the procedures in most European countries look quick and simple, and make the US positively neolithic.
And Japan not only has one of the lowest GUN crime rates in the world, one of the lowest murder rates in the world, but one of the lowest rates of ALL kinds of crime in the world.
Where ELSE, and under what OTHER circumstances, do you find cities of twelve million people where you can safely and confidently walk most any street at night; knowing that your chances of falling victim to crime (gun-related, or otherwise) is so miniscule as to not be worth considering?
I think a large part of this "whineing" is because that, with few exceptions, most movies based on books have turned out to be terribly, terribly, bad.
Okay, so you already posted a couple of exceptions. I can think of a few too.
But for every "Fight Club", there is a "Starship Troopers", or a "Congo", or a "Sphere", or a "The Sum of All Fears", or a "Pet Semitary", and so on.
Actually, most of the drug dealers I've met are much nicer, more considerate, and decent people than telemarketers. By all means, I'd rathar we quit putting drug dealers in jail, putting telemarketers there instead.
Consider that dealers either wait for YOU to phone or page THEM; or if they're working at a party, they might offer you their wares once, and if you say "no" they leave you alone the rest of the night.
I've never had a drug dealer interrupt me at dinner, trying to sell me coke, E, K, or whatever the trendy drug-of-the-moment is.
If I say no when I am offered drugs, they don't follow me around, pestering me, trying desperately to convince me to buy. They TAKE my "no" for an answer and leave me alone.
No drug dealer has EVER woken me up from a hangover at 8am on a saturday morning.
Drug dealers don't seek out my phone number and trade it amongst other dealers for them to cold-call me.
In general, the claims that drug dealers make about what they're selling tend to be closer to the truth than the claims of telemarketers.
And if I tell a drug dealer I'm not intrested in buying from him; he does not sue, claiming a constitutional right to sell me pills.
None of the above is true about telemarketers. So, all things considered, I WOULD much rathar see telemarketers in jail than drug dealers; as the telemarketers are FAR more of an annoying pestulance.
Given that Steve Jobs has proven, by turning the company around and restoreing relevance and profitability after the bungleing incompetence of gil amelio, that he *IS*, in fact, the one person who should be, and should have been, running Apple...
... where do you think Apple would be today, had you not fumbled the ball by fireing Jobs, and pissing away much of Apple's once-dominant market share?
> their image remains one of the worst in the industry, and > their buying age has not improved. Reason? They hire > lousy ad firms, and their products are uncool period.
It's also because their products are absolute shit.
My ex-girlfriend's VW is going great at 100K miles having only had routine maintaince. My mom's Mazda is at 80K and the same. My friend's Toyota topped 250K withour a problem before he sold it. My old Honda was at 175K before it got wrecked. In all these cases, with no more than the routine maintaince called for in the book.
Last time my dad owned a Chevy, it was basiclly undrivable by the time it hit 60K miles. And even to get the thing to 60K, he had to do FAR more than routine maintaince. As I recall, the transmission had to be replaced once, then rebuilt again later; the master brake cylinder needed to be replaced, and both the power steering and air conditioner systems needed major repairs as well.
Even if GM were to run as good an ad campaign as Apple; that wouldn't change the fact that their cars are detroit-designed, detroit-built, pieces of shit-on-wheels. And I'll NEVER own one.
Hell, when I was shopping for my current car, I went out of my way not only to research the brand and model, but to actually find out *WHERE* the models I was shopping for were built. That way, I was able to make sure that my car was legitimately built in Japan itself, instead of being cobbled together by monkeys at the plant they set up here in the US.
Detriot's problem is NOT image. It's problem is quality; or, more accurately, the absence therof.
Slashdot Mirror
> That's way less than they anticipated. Only 5 million out of
> 100 knocked me flat.
Actually, no matter what the marketdroids SAY they expected, I'd bet that is EXACTLY what the suits HOPED for: lots of publicity with much less cash outlay than what it could have cost them.
No doubt, the arrangement called for Pepsi to pay for the songs that were redeemed by the deadline, not the whole 100 million. Otherwise, why have a deadline at all? They probably had some people work the numbers as to how much "brand awareness" they would build vs. the number so songs they'd likely have to pay for. It's like when CompUSA sells memory at $40 for 256MB, with a $30 mail-in rebate. They're counting on most people being lazy or forgetful and not cashing in the rebate.
Five percent.... I bet that's pretty close to the number of people who actually redeem mail-in rebates too.
Myself, I had a stack of ten or so codes, sitting on my desk, that I didn't get around to using until yesterday and today. If I had forgotten the deadline, or been busy and put it off, those codes would have expired tomorrow.
cya,
john
Well, I can't speak for any company or development group. But if *I* came up with some bit of code that was nifty and patentable; my concern wouldn't be about fscking with j. random hobbiest or home user. I WOULD want to restrict access only to those aforementioned corporate interests.... the meat farmers, the weapons manufacturers, police and government agencies, and the like. Those are the very sorts for whom license compliance is a big issue, and who can't get away with downloading and using, rights free, some illicit binary from some ex-soviet-block country.
*M*Y ideal license would function mostly identically to the GPL, but only for private, non-commercial, non-government use. And the author would retain veto power (and the right to demand a fee, or a share of the gross), should some corporate interest decide they want to appropriate. and profit from, it.
cya,
john
If you have the money to muddle through the patent process in the first place; you probably have enough extra money to buy an hour or two of a copyright/contract lawyer's time, give him a copy of the GPL, and instruct him to: "write a license that functions exactly like the GPL, in every way, except that it allows me to retain full control over my patents.".
It's not like the GPL is the holy writ or anything. It's just a software license. And if it doesn't fit your needs, just use a different one.
cya,
john
AIM, YIM, and the like should still be disallowed.
I've worked in an environment where we were pretty scattered and reliant on IM too. But we had a private IRC server set up on-site, and behind our firewall. AIM, YIM, and so on, route their messages through the 'net at large, and through servers owned by AOL, Yahoo, and so on. That's a very BAD thing if there's even a CHANCE that you'll pass along code snippets or discuss confidential company information.
cya,
john
It's not about how everyone MUST learn everything "the hard way". It's about people who are unwilling to learn AT ALL. There is nothing at all dishonorable about taking a class, or if you do go it yourself, asking for help if there's something you're just not getting. (I am NOT one of those crusty old RTFM types... unless it's a truly and obnoxiously stupid question.) It's the people who are unwilling to make the effort I have no respect for.
And besides, I defy you to tell me with a straight face that shifting TSRs around memory segments with LH, fucking around with himem.sys and emm386, diagnosing IRQ conflicts, and all that other shit with which I was intimately familiar before my last wintel finally died, is REALLY significantly easier than configuring X11 on linux. *I* just happened to put in the effort to learn both; rather than just learning one skill and saying: "that's enough".
cya,
john
> No one had to show me how to do it, I figured stuff ...
/usr/bin/, read man pages, and played with anything that looked interesting.
> out on my own.
>
> I've taught myself almost everything I know by trial
> and error and just intuitively figuring things out,
When I wanted to know how to use my family's first computer (an Apple ][+), this is EXACTLY how I learned. No one sat down and held my hand. My dad made one copy of the system master disk for me, pointed to the stack of manuals on the bookshelf, and told me to learn how to use the thing. And, at the age of six, I tought myself how to use that Apple ][+, and, over the next few years, how to program pretty well in Apple BASIC (and a bit of 6504 assembler).
When we got a C64 to go along with the Apple, I taught myself the same way (and formed a love/hate relationship with sprites).
Ditto, when we got out first Macintosh.
Likewise, when we got our wintel.
When I went off to college, I took the 486 with me, becoming temporarily Mac-less. There, I was first introduced to Unix (SunOS, Irix, and AIX mostly). The CS department's sysadmin was one of those scruffy old "RTFM" types. And most of the programming classes assumed you already had a working knowledge of Unix. So there was no one to hold my hand through the "learning how to use Unix" process, either. Mostly, I poked around in
And after windows finally ate one-lab-report-too-many, I bought a blank CD-R from the campus bookstore, had our sysadmin burn me a copy of slackware's latest, went back to my dorm, and (yes, after some trial and error in getting it installed and running properly) wiped microsoft out of my life. You know how I learned Linux? The exact way you describe yourself learning windows, and the exact way I learned every other OS.
And when the public beta of Mac OS X (my current primary OS) came out (and, truth be told, I had a few burned copies of the developers' previews too), I got a copy immediately. And I "intuitively figured things out" "on my own" and "by trial and error".
See, the thing is that I am *gasp* WILLING TO LEARN NEW THINGS. There is no reason in the world why *I* can learn new things, and others can't. beyond plain and simple apathy, laziness, and unwillingness to learn.
cya,
john
Mea culpa...
I stand corrected. In my own defense though, I haven't been a part of any warez kiddie circle since... well... I was a kiddie (18yo) myself.
cya,
john
The parent has a good point. Apple should have looked at the example set by deCSS.
/. article alone. And more are coming. And no doubt that work on PlayFair will continue, with much-increased enthusiasm once it is hosted somewhere outside US borders.
Before the MPAA started harassing "DVD-Jon" and DMCA-ing everyone who so much as mentioned the name deCSS in public; only a small handful of linux nerds had even heard of the thing, much less built and compiled it into media players for their own machines. No big deal. It was just a toy for extreme hobbyists.
After the MPAA tried to take deCSS out, every self-righteous geek on the 'net made sure to get a copy. And many of them made it their mission to spread it further, and more mirrors than I could guess popped up. Somewhere *I* still have a copy of deCSS embedded into a webpage banner in some way that I don't even remember how to extract it.
So what was PlayFair before Apple DMCA'd sourceforge? Another cute toy that was only of any use to someone who had already BOUGHT the song from ITMS in the first place. It's not like anybody hacked a backdoor into ITMS itself and made the entire library free to the 'net. Now, there are half a dozen mirrors in this
It reminds me of a Douglas Adams quote.... about how while humans are unique in being the only species capable of learning from the mistakes of others, we are remarkably disinclined to actually do so.
cya,
john
> They went there, because they're in the military, and in the
> military you follow orders that your commander gives you.
Don't forget, recent efforts on the part of congress and the selective service to the contrary, there is still no draft in the US, nor has there been for thirty years or so.
Every single one of those people VOLUNTEERED to go barge into another country and murder brown people in the name of halliburton's and betchel's share prices.
cya,
john
... and absolute "no"'s and "nevers"'s tend to be easily proven wrong.
Don't think that anyone should ever free ride just because he has that (D) next to his name on the congressional roster.
I seem to recall quite well that one of the big muckety-mucks amongst congress' democrats turned out to have been a klansman, something which should disqualify anyone, wether they put the (R) *or* the (D) after their name, from ever holding any public office. As I recall, this flap was dug up after Trent Lott got called to task on his praise for strom thurmond's segregationist politics. In fact, as I recall from a few of his bios, when he finally had the good grace to die, thurmond himself was a registered democrat at one point.
You'd do better to replace "democrat" with "liberal" in much of your post, as the two do not always (or perhaps even often, given the dems tendancy to veer to the right and be all buddy-buddy with the reps, of late) coincide. *I*, for example, could walk down to the post office, fill out a new voter registration card, and be a registered republican by the end of the day. But few people woulf ever mistake me for a conservative.
> all of your time - 24/7 - belongs to the university. In
> principle, an invention you create on the weekends is owned
> by them
I don't know what state you're in, but in some, employment clauses like that are illegal and unenforcable. In fact, every time I've been hired at a tech job here in California, at contract time there was a seperate page to sign explicitly saying that such clauses were illegal and unenforcable and that any clauses like that in the rest of the contract that said so were null and void.
(I'm not sure why they did it THAT way, instead of just removing said clauses from the rest of the contract. My guess is that the court ruleings rendering such clauses illegal were fairly recent, and nobody had gone through the bother of sorting through all of the legal gunk in all the various employment contract and writing out the relevant passages. But I may be wrong)
cya,
john
Nope... I don't care a bit about the cutscenes.
What bioware PROMISED, while NWN was under development, was a simultaneous release of both the Mac and PC versions (in the same box even) of a COMPLETE game. And when they released the PC version (with no Mac version), they promised Mac users that they could buy the pc version, and that a Mac binary would be released shortly later (ala Quake 3).
What bioware DELIVERED was a seperate Mac version almost two years late. They delivered a crippled and incomplete game that lacked the level-builder toolkit and the expansion. And they expected to charge full-price for a game that lacked said toolkit, when the pc version WITH toolkit AND expansion is selling for $30.
Oh, and the Mac users who bought the pc version, under the belief that bioware would live up to their promise when the Mac version slipped the FIRST time? They got shafted, without so much as even a rebate or refund from bioware. If they want to play NWN, they have to buy it AGAIN, at full price.
cya,
john
If Halo was still being prodeced by an independent Bungie, and actually included all of the features we were promised at MacWorld, way back when; *I* would happily plonk down the $50 for it.
Instead, we get a Halo that is produced by microsoft, to whom bungiee whored themselves out. We get a halo that is a crappy port of a console game. We get a Halo that has been gutted of almost all of the features that would have made it uber-cool must-have. We get a Halo that has been turned into just another mediocre FPS.
No way in HELL I'd pay even a penny for the damn thing. Of course, I don't even consider it worth the waste of bandwidth to download either. But if I DID want to play a half-assed imitation of Halo, I would have no moral qualms about DLing the thing.
NOTE TO GAME DEVELOPERS:
Keep faith with your customers, keep the promises you make; and people will happily buy your products. Betray us, break your promises; and you piss people off and lose customers. Maybe it's not taught in business 101, but it's sure taught in human nature 101. See also: the other poster's remarks about what was promised vs. what was delivered WRT/ the Mac (and linux) version of Neverwinter Nights.
cya,
john
> We need to keep the look of our currency intact if we want a
> stable currency system.
Not really. Many other nations, with quite stable currencies, revamp the look of their banknotes every so often, simply as a matter of course. It is the US that is the "odd man out" for having ours look so similar for so long.
As an example that's coming up sooner than later; do you really think that when Elisibeth II dies, and every banknote and coin in the commonwealth is redone to feature Charles, that the new LOOK of the money is going to destablize the currencies of every (or any, for that matter) member?
cya,
john
> Then I started noticing how irritating it was when people
> who were specialized in other fields - e.g. medicine, car
> mechanics - did the same thing to me.
Even as a non-specialist, it is assumed and expected that I will know and apply the basics of both of said fields, with at least a minimum of competentcy.
I don't, for example, need a mechanic to tell me that I have to put gas in my car to make it run. Nor do I require his aid to check and change my oil, change a tire, and so on. As the owner of a car, it is assumed that I have at least these minimum skills.
I don't run to my doctor for every little sniffle; 95% of the time, I just drink a shot of NyQuill, go to bed early, and sleep off whatever ails me. Nor do I need him to bandage every little cut and bruise for me. And if I happen across someone who needs it, *I*, a non-doctor, am certified to administer CPR. Hell, I could probably even dredge up enough recall from my first-aid merit badge to splint a broken bone or treat someone for shock!
In neither of these examples is the knowledge I mentioned the exclusive territory of specialistd. They are just the very basic competentcies that it is assumed that as functioning and responsible car owners, or functioning and responsible humen beings, we will all know.
But it seems to be a very frusterating and to-oft recurring feature of the computer/IT industry thar lusers will remain willfully ignorant of even the very basics of how to operate and maintain that expensive and complicated technology that they rely upon; sometimes as much or more than their car. And I don't think it's unreasonable at all to be frusterated when they continue to be so willfully ignorant.
cya,
john
> I know I don't bother picking up if there's no caller
Not only do I not bother to answer if they block callerID, if they DO leave a message, I delete it without bothering to listen.
I figure if a caller is so rude as to attempt to deny me the choice as to wether or not he deserves my time, then he probably doesn't deserve a second my time in the first place. Or if said caller is so convinced that I wouldn't want to talk to him, and he has to be decietful and hit *67, then he's probably right, and I DON'T want to talk to the little sneak.
It works great too... Even on the landline, I hardly ever have to hear a telemarketer's pitch (even though they're so rude as to call YOU, they don't want you to be able to call THEM, so they almost always block callerID). And it's absolutely WONDERFUL for not having to talk to that creepy, annoying, 'ex who wouldn't leave me alone for the longest time.
cya,
john
One of my housemates is still geeky enough to (and still has the dotcom job to be able to afford to) take the whole household out to see Martix: Revolutions on the Metreon's IMAX screen for the midnight, opening night (morning?), showing. I sure appreciated it, and didn't turn down the opportunity. But, many, Many, MANY, times throughout the course of the night; I thought to myself: "The ticket price should include the right to beat up one trenchcoat-wearing dork".
I've already been told not to make plans for wednesday night. So while I'll, no doubt, greatly enjoy seeing ROTK; I'll also, no doubt, spend a good portion of the night desperately resisting the urge to throttle selected RenFair/SCA rejects.
No wonder most of my newer friends are more from the artsy-fartsy crowd than the geek crowd. They may smell bad from smoking too much. But at least I won't catch them making lightsaber or warp drive noises anytime soon.
cya,
john
lol yes silly ac, but the first rule of computer secutity is that if the "bad guy" has physical access to the machine, the game's over. The "good guys" lose, and the "bad guys" win.
If I've used my 1337 cat-burgular skills to break into Exodus, and actually have access to the machine itself; I'm not going to waste time useing my 1337 hacking skills or my (presumably) equally-1337 CD of hacking tools. I'll simply crack open the machine, rip out the drive, take it home, and read the data I want at my leisure.
cya,
john
I mean... really... next thing you know, there'll be an article in MacAddict that says something mean about PCs...
cya,
john
> Do you also believe your local library should stock
> Playboy on the shelves with Popular Science?
Have you looked at an issue of Playboy lately?
The "pictures of naked girls" parts of the magazine take up only a VERY small portion of the whole. And as far as nudie pictures go, they're QUITE tame compared to the bulk of the rest of the "nudie magazine" rack (pun unintended). And let's not even get STARTED compareing them to the bulk of 'net porn. Playboy's pictorals are no more, and sometimes less, risque than the nudes you'll find in the art/photography section of the library.
And when you come right down to it, there's some damn good writing in Playboy. I'm not going to lie, and say that I "JUST read the articles". But I *do* ALSO read the articles. Many of them are very good, and quite worthy of being in a library.
cya,
john
... where the hoops you have to go through to own a gun make the procedures in most European countries look quick and simple, and make the US positively neolithic.
And Japan not only has one of the lowest GUN crime rates in the world, one of the lowest murder rates in the world, but one of the lowest rates of ALL kinds of crime in the world.
Where ELSE, and under what OTHER circumstances, do you find cities of twelve million people where you can safely and confidently walk most any street at night; knowing that your chances of falling victim to crime (gun-related, or otherwise) is so miniscule as to not be worth considering?
cya,
john
I think a large part of this "whineing" is because that, with few exceptions, most movies based on books have turned out to be terribly, terribly, bad.
Okay, so you already posted a couple of exceptions. I can think of a few too.
But for every "Fight Club", there is a "Starship Troopers", or a "Congo", or a "Sphere", or a "The Sum of All Fears", or a "Pet Semitary", and so on.
cya,
john
Actually, most of the drug dealers I've met are much nicer, more considerate, and decent people than telemarketers. By all means, I'd rathar we quit putting drug dealers in jail, putting telemarketers there instead.
Consider that dealers either wait for YOU to phone or page THEM; or if they're working at a party, they might offer you their wares once, and if you say "no" they leave you alone the rest of the night.
I've never had a drug dealer interrupt me at dinner, trying to sell me coke, E, K, or whatever the trendy drug-of-the-moment is.
If I say no when I am offered drugs, they don't follow me around, pestering me, trying desperately to convince me to buy. They TAKE my "no" for an answer and leave me alone.
No drug dealer has EVER woken me up from a hangover at 8am on a saturday morning.
Drug dealers don't seek out my phone number and trade it amongst other dealers for them to cold-call me.
In general, the claims that drug dealers make about what they're selling tend to be closer to the truth than the claims of telemarketers.
And if I tell a drug dealer I'm not intrested in buying from him; he does not sue, claiming a constitutional right to sell me pills.
None of the above is true about telemarketers. So, all things considered, I WOULD much rathar see telemarketers in jail than drug dealers; as the telemarketers are FAR more of an annoying pestulance.
cya,
john
cya,
john
> their image remains one of the worst in the industry, and
> their buying age has not improved. Reason? They hire
> lousy ad firms, and their products are uncool period.
It's also because their products are absolute shit.
My ex-girlfriend's VW is going great at 100K miles having only had routine maintaince. My mom's Mazda is at 80K and the same. My friend's Toyota topped 250K withour a problem before he sold it. My old Honda was at 175K before it got wrecked. In all these cases, with no more than the routine maintaince called for in the book.
Last time my dad owned a Chevy, it was basiclly undrivable by the time it hit 60K miles. And even to get the thing to 60K, he had to do FAR more than routine maintaince. As I recall, the transmission had to be replaced once, then rebuilt again later; the master brake cylinder needed to be replaced, and both the power steering and air conditioner systems needed major repairs as well.
Even if GM were to run as good an ad campaign as Apple; that wouldn't change the fact that their cars are detroit-designed, detroit-built, pieces of shit-on-wheels. And I'll NEVER own one.
Hell, when I was shopping for my current car, I went out of my way not only to research the brand and model, but to actually find out *WHERE* the models I was shopping for were built. That way, I was able to make sure that my car was legitimately built in Japan itself, instead of being cobbled together by monkeys at the plant they set up here in the US.
Detriot's problem is NOT image. It's problem is quality; or, more accurately, the absence therof.
cya,
john