Because if they don't have one, it makes them dependent on others when they need one. And there are many people who can't handle that.
A fair number of my co-workers are amazed that I'll drive a small car for my daily commute. When I ask they why they use a massive pickup truck as their commuter vehicle, it's "in case I need it", or some BS about not being able to afford a smaller commuter car while keeping their large truck. For them, knowing that they have a massive four-wheel drive truck at their disposal at all times is worth the cost.
For me, I make them feel good about themselves by asking to borrow it when I need a truck. Nothing is more manly than being able to help someone with your massive truck. It's the reason you bought it, right?
I agree. I'm pretty anti-Republican, but had McCain stayed true to his "maverick" self, he would have had a good shot at my vote. As it is, third party all the way. Neither major party is getting my vote until they stop being corporate whores.
Same on the third party choices, but we're all pen and paper in our little town of ~3k. With a half-dozen tables set up, with partitions for 4 people at each, I didn't have any wait. Voting is easy - fill in the bubbles next to the people you like, run it into the (unfortunately Diebold) optical scanner, and it's all done. The scan results get announced a 8pm, and then the handcount double-checks it for an official number in the next 24 hrs.
Even though my dear grandma is a hardcore Republican, I'm confident about our system. She's too honest to cheat when she helps count the votes.
Yes, yes you are. No need to stop - this is slashdot after all. At least your ramble is semi-coherent and has links. Hell, it even got a reply. That's got to be positive reinforcement....
Today I used a step above and beyond: I used paper and felt-tipped PEN, and filled in the dots next to the people I wanted to vote for. Then I put my vote into a bin, to be optically scanned for an automagical count at 8pm tonight, and then hand-counted at leisure over the next day or so. The optical-scan is the one immediately reported, and the hand-count is the official one.
I really don't understand the problems with voting. How is it that my small town can figure it out, yet it seems that nobody else can?
Limit your voters to a couple of thousand per voting site, give each site a stack of ballots and a box of pens, and an optical scanner. Scan for immediate results, hand-count to double-check the accuracy. This isn't rocket science.
If you haven't used a pair of these then you're missing out on what scissors are supposed to be like. I've never had much problem with blister packs while using them. Night and day from the old, smooth-bladed heavy kitchen shears of my youth. These don't slip off things.
A second reason for blister packs is that they allow you to position your product precisely for the best viewing by the customer. Yes, there is marketing research that goes into that in some cases. Presentation is important, and a bin full things all mashed together is nowhere near as desirable as a single item, on display, and surrounded with shiny stuff. They keep all the parts together, and allow items to be shoveled into bins and retrieved later in good condition.
Your comment made me laugh, but it also reminded me of something I once said to a creationist along the lines of: "Do you really think that the biblical story of god sitting down at his table and making the universe in seven days with his bare hands is more impressive than a god who came up with evolution, and then pushed the "big bang" button, sat back, and watched? Do you find it more compelling and amazing to believe that god made the earth with fossils in it to test our faith, than that god made a universe 15 billion years ago, and left us the clues to unravel its mysteries?"
While I grew up in a very religious family, those ideas are part of why I am no longer religious.
while I consider myself a libertarian at heart, there is no way I could vote for the Barr/Root ticket
I'd agree that I wouldn't be all that happy with them winning. But have you considered voting for them not to win, but to protest your other options?
At the moment, the popular view is that a vote for one of the two big parties is a tacit acknowledgment that you like them better than the other. A vote for a third party, no matter how absurd, is more often viewed as a protest vote, rather than a serious "I want them to win". Because at the moment, they have no chance of winning.
If you don't like what we have now, vote for something different. Don't give one party your vote just because they are marginally better than the other main party. If you're Libertarian, vote for them. At the moment, it doesn't matter who the hell is on their ticket. The best case scenario is if they become a threat to the two main parties with a decent candidate some time down the line. Second best would be a threat with a poor candidate. Both are better than a party you believe in with no ability to influence anything.
That is why I will walk to the somberly walk to the polls with head bowed and pull the lever for McCain. My head and heart are with Bob Barr, but there is reality to contend with.
And you are the reason that the US is in the shithole it is in.
Voting for McCain in your state will not make a lick of difference. Nobody will notice. Nobody will care. Your vote will be lost in a sea of other votes. He is not about to lose by a single vote, because you didn't vote for him.
But voting for Bob Barr might make a difference. If he takes 1%, 2% of the votes, his name goes on the television. It shows up on the pie charts. If he takes 4% of the vote, the other parties start to discuss strategies to get those votes back.
If you "walk to the polls with head bowed and pull the lever for McCain" you are not "contending with reality". You're wasting your vote, when you could make a change.
After the last election I made a promise to myself - I promised I wouldn't vote Republican or Democrat ever again. I'd also encourage everyone else to do the same. It doesn't matter who you vote for - Libertarian, Green, Communist, Constitutional, or the Boston Tea party. If you aren't happy with the choices DON'T VOTE FOR THEM!.
I promise you - your vote will make a much larger difference as a protest vote to the current parties than it will make as a single vote amidst the sea of other votes that party will get.
Me personally? Installed via a live-cd, got the essentials working, and called it quits. Yes, more work than Ubuntu. A day or so more. But the speed is impressive, and it was worth the first few days of fighting with it.
Make no mistake - I have a Ubuntu netbook and a backup desktop running Ubuntu for when I need something special that doesn't exist on the Gentoo machine. But for day-to-day stuff, it's far faster.
I just have to treat it like a prima-dona, and never change things. To each their own, I guess.
I'd add to this list the fact that the game lacked a mid-game map vote, the map voting did not allow a change in gametype, and you were unable to ban by CD key, and instead banned by Gamespy ID, a newly required and completely stupid requirement which was easily circumvented. The game also shipped without a web-admin interface, and when one did show up, it was piss-poor.
UT2k4 was hosted something like 80% of the time on linux servers, yet UT3 shipped without a linux server port, and was without one for several months, all the while Epic complained about low PC sales.
While many of these issues have been at least partially addressed, the fact remains that UT2k4 had all of these features. The fact you would REGRESS from one version to another is mindblowing to me. If you remove important and working features, and then badmouth your customers, how do you expect to keep them?
Well, you were a whole lot more elegant than I was, to be sure. Generally I'm a bit more refined in my thoughts. But Epic has pissed me off more than most other gaming companies have. It's one thing to put out a crappy product. It's an entirely different thing to piss in the face of long-time loyal customers.
My hat is off to you for your elegance on the subject. My ire prevents such elegance on my part.
After a fucking YEAR we're still waiting for a useful version of UT3 to show up. The same damn game that they once talked about having linux and mac ports for, linux and mac editor for....doesn't have a decent linux SERVER, let alone non-windows Client! And the editor? It doesn't even friggin work in Windows half the time. And of course, it's not ported yet. To ice this cake of stupid? They are bitching about piracy hurting their games. Piracy? How about releasing Shit? Any chance that has hurt sales?
At the moment, the entire god damn game still has limited functionality compared to UT2k4. Despite my friends and I having a one of the better UT3 servers, those of us who still play have pretty much abandoned the game. This, after 9 years of playing the UT franchise.
I was in the same boat as you. Used Gentoo for a few years, and realized that I was spending way too much time screwing with it. I also switched to Ubuntu, but I have to say, my Gentoo machine was always faster and had more features. For that reason I went back to Gentoo on my desktop, with one major change: I stopped trying to friggin play games on the thing. Turns out that when you get it to a usable state, and stop screwing with it, Gentoo works a lot like Ubuntu. That is, it just works.
Every time I have the urge to tinker with things, I try to make sure that it will really make a difference, and be worth the time. If not, I just go use Ubuntu. Now I have a fast desktop that just works. And on the off chance it doesn't the Ubuntu distros on the backup desktop or the Asus EEE Just Work.
To build on this, why not use UT or GMT while we're at it? If you're open from 1100 to 1900, I'll know when you're open no matter where in the world I am, provided we're both using UT/GMT. Time zones are another outdated and stupid concept, in a very well connected age.
Because Apple generally sells out, or comes damn close. And because there is still a very healthy market for them even at minimal markdown.
Neither of these are true for Dell. At the same time, the culture of Apple is "be the first to buy the new version", while the culture of Dell is "order a medium machine in bulk". Dell is all about Quantity.
What? You mean to tell me that after the people were arrested, the compromised machines kept doing what they were told to do?
I thought that they sent every spam by hand.....
Really, you obviously see what TFA seems to be blind to. It is absolutely stupid to assume that somehow arresting people will fix the problem of automated spamming. For all we know, the compromised machines have a 6 month queue of spam to send, in pre-purchased amounts. Set it up once, charge your slimy clients once, and then sit on your money until the feds bust you....
In engineering, you need precision. In astrophysics you need vague hand waving. Because when you examine hand-waving at an appropriately large scale, it looks pretty darn precise.
I know that we always got excited when we got answers we could be confident to "within 50%". I think in things like bridge building and heart surgery you need slightly better accuracy...
Most OSS projects have a handful of rabid developers who really know the code, and heavily scrutinize (or simply reject) anything anyone else submits. Now could *they* put something malicious into the code? Of course. But if a project is your life, submarining it with malicious code is not generally what you're going to do. The rabid developers generally also have a fair bit of ego, and keeping up a good honest project is the best way to keep boosting that ego.
It's entirely possible that malicious code could be inserted into an OSS project. But it's far more difficult, and far more obvious than in closed-source projects. There, one programmer can make one change, and if the others on the project never look at it too closely, NOBODY will ever see it. The simple fact that someone *could* see your submission to an OSS project keeps out most of the malicious code.
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Because if they don't have one, it makes them dependent on others when they need one. And there are many people who can't handle that.
A fair number of my co-workers are amazed that I'll drive a small car for my daily commute. When I ask they why they use a massive pickup truck as their commuter vehicle, it's "in case I need it", or some BS about not being able to afford a smaller commuter car while keeping their large truck. For them, knowing that they have a massive four-wheel drive truck at their disposal at all times is worth the cost.
For me, I make them feel good about themselves by asking to borrow it when I need a truck. Nothing is more manly than being able to help someone with your massive truck. It's the reason you bought it, right?
People are free to tag any idiot they want?
I agree. I'm pretty anti-Republican, but had McCain stayed true to his "maverick" self, he would have had a good shot at my vote. As it is, third party all the way. Neither major party is getting my vote until they stop being corporate whores.
Same on the third party choices, but we're all pen and paper in our little town of ~3k. With a half-dozen tables set up, with partitions for 4 people at each, I didn't have any wait. Voting is easy - fill in the bubbles next to the people you like, run it into the (unfortunately Diebold) optical scanner, and it's all done. The scan results get announced a 8pm, and then the handcount double-checks it for an official number in the next 24 hrs.
Even though my dear grandma is a hardcore Republican, I'm confident about our system. She's too honest to cheat when she helps count the votes.
Yes, yes you are. No need to stop - this is slashdot after all. At least your ramble is semi-coherent and has links. Hell, it even got a reply. That's got to be positive reinforcement....
Today I used a step above and beyond: I used paper and felt-tipped PEN, and filled in the dots next to the people I wanted to vote for. Then I put my vote into a bin, to be optically scanned for an automagical count at 8pm tonight, and then hand-counted at leisure over the next day or so. The optical-scan is the one immediately reported, and the hand-count is the official one.
I really don't understand the problems with voting. How is it that my small town can figure it out, yet it seems that nobody else can?
Limit your voters to a couple of thousand per voting site, give each site a stack of ballots and a box of pens, and an optical scanner. Scan for immediate results, hand-count to double-check the accuracy. This isn't rocket science.
If you haven't used a pair of these then you're missing out on what scissors are supposed to be like. I've never had much problem with blister packs while using them. Night and day from the old, smooth-bladed heavy kitchen shears of my youth. These don't slip off things.
A second reason for blister packs is that they allow you to position your product precisely for the best viewing by the customer. Yes, there is marketing research that goes into that in some cases. Presentation is important, and a bin full things all mashed together is nowhere near as desirable as a single item, on display, and surrounded with shiny stuff. They keep all the parts together, and allow items to be shoveled into bins and retrieved later in good condition.
Your comment made me laugh, but it also reminded me of something I once said to a creationist along the lines of: "Do you really think that the biblical story of god sitting down at his table and making the universe in seven days with his bare hands is more impressive than a god who came up with evolution, and then pushed the "big bang" button, sat back, and watched? Do you find it more compelling and amazing to believe that god made the earth with fossils in it to test our faith, than that god made a universe 15 billion years ago, and left us the clues to unravel its mysteries?"
While I grew up in a very religious family, those ideas are part of why I am no longer religious.
If only there were a few million more of us. I'm also a protest-voting snowflake, hoping one day to be part of an avalanche.
It's not that low...only about half-way down.
I'd agree that I wouldn't be all that happy with them winning. But have you considered voting for them not to win, but to protest your other options?
At the moment, the popular view is that a vote for one of the two big parties is a tacit acknowledgment that you like them better than the other. A vote for a third party, no matter how absurd, is more often viewed as a protest vote, rather than a serious "I want them to win". Because at the moment, they have no chance of winning.
If you don't like what we have now, vote for something different. Don't give one party your vote just because they are marginally better than the other main party. If you're Libertarian, vote for them. At the moment, it doesn't matter who the hell is on their ticket. The best case scenario is if they become a threat to the two main parties with a decent candidate some time down the line. Second best would be a threat with a poor candidate. Both are better than a party you believe in with no ability to influence anything.
And you are the reason that the US is in the shithole it is in.
Voting for McCain in your state will not make a lick of difference. Nobody will notice. Nobody will care. Your vote will be lost in a sea of other votes. He is not about to lose by a single vote, because you didn't vote for him.
But voting for Bob Barr might make a difference. If he takes 1%, 2% of the votes, his name goes on the television. It shows up on the pie charts. If he takes 4% of the vote, the other parties start to discuss strategies to get those votes back.
If you "walk to the polls with head bowed and pull the lever for McCain" you are not "contending with reality". You're wasting your vote, when you could make a change.
After the last election I made a promise to myself - I promised I wouldn't vote Republican or Democrat ever again. I'd also encourage everyone else to do the same. It doesn't matter who you vote for - Libertarian, Green, Communist, Constitutional, or the Boston Tea party. If you aren't happy with the choices DON'T VOTE FOR THEM!.
I promise you - your vote will make a much larger difference as a protest vote to the current parties than it will make as a single vote amidst the sea of other votes that party will get.
Me personally? Installed via a live-cd, got the essentials working, and called it quits. Yes, more work than Ubuntu. A day or so more. But the speed is impressive, and it was worth the first few days of fighting with it.
Make no mistake - I have a Ubuntu netbook and a backup desktop running Ubuntu for when I need something special that doesn't exist on the Gentoo machine. But for day-to-day stuff, it's far faster.
I just have to treat it like a prima-dona, and never change things. To each their own, I guess.
I'd add to this list the fact that the game lacked a mid-game map vote, the map voting did not allow a change in gametype, and you were unable to ban by CD key, and instead banned by Gamespy ID, a newly required and completely stupid requirement which was easily circumvented. The game also shipped without a web-admin interface, and when one did show up, it was piss-poor.
UT2k4 was hosted something like 80% of the time on linux servers, yet UT3 shipped without a linux server port, and was without one for several months, all the while Epic complained about low PC sales.
While many of these issues have been at least partially addressed, the fact remains that UT2k4 had all of these features. The fact you would REGRESS from one version to another is mindblowing to me. If you remove important and working features, and then badmouth your customers, how do you expect to keep them?
I hate to sound crusty...
Well, you were a whole lot more elegant than I was, to be sure. Generally I'm a bit more refined in my thoughts. But Epic has pissed me off more than most other gaming companies have. It's one thing to put out a crappy product. It's an entirely different thing to piss in the face of long-time loyal customers.
My hat is off to you for your elegance on the subject. My ire prevents such elegance on my part.
Yes, karma bedamned, Fuck Epic.
After a fucking YEAR we're still waiting for a useful version of UT3 to show up. The same damn game that they once talked about having linux and mac ports for, linux and mac editor for....doesn't have a decent linux SERVER, let alone non-windows Client! And the editor? It doesn't even friggin work in Windows half the time. And of course, it's not ported yet. To ice this cake of stupid? They are bitching about piracy hurting their games. Piracy? How about releasing Shit? Any chance that has hurt sales?
At the moment, the entire god damn game still has limited functionality compared to UT2k4. Despite my friends and I having a one of the better UT3 servers, those of us who still play have pretty much abandoned the game. This, after 9 years of playing the UT franchise.
Fuck Epic. We'll go play something else.
I was in the same boat as you. Used Gentoo for a few years, and realized that I was spending way too much time screwing with it. I also switched to Ubuntu, but I have to say, my Gentoo machine was always faster and had more features. For that reason I went back to Gentoo on my desktop, with one major change: I stopped trying to friggin play games on the thing. Turns out that when you get it to a usable state, and stop screwing with it, Gentoo works a lot like Ubuntu. That is, it just works.
Every time I have the urge to tinker with things, I try to make sure that it will really make a difference, and be worth the time. If not, I just go use Ubuntu. Now I have a fast desktop that just works. And on the off chance it doesn't the Ubuntu distros on the backup desktop or the Asus EEE Just Work.
To build on this, why not use UT or GMT while we're at it? If you're open from 1100 to 1900, I'll know when you're open no matter where in the world I am, provided we're both using UT/GMT. Time zones are another outdated and stupid concept, in a very well connected age.
A bumper sticker that I've recently seen read:
The only Bush I trust is my own.
Because Apple generally sells out, or comes damn close. And because there is still a very healthy market for them even at minimal markdown.
Neither of these are true for Dell. At the same time, the culture of Apple is "be the first to buy the new version", while the culture of Dell is "order a medium machine in bulk". Dell is all about Quantity.
What? You mean to tell me that after the people were arrested, the compromised machines kept doing what they were told to do?
I thought that they sent every spam by hand.....
Really, you obviously see what TFA seems to be blind to. It is absolutely stupid to assume that somehow arresting people will fix the problem of automated spamming. For all we know, the compromised machines have a 6 month queue of spam to send, in pre-purchased amounts. Set it up once, charge your slimy clients once, and then sit on your money until the feds bust you....
In engineering, you need precision. In astrophysics you need vague hand waving. Because when you examine hand-waving at an appropriately large scale, it looks pretty darn precise.
I know that we always got excited when we got answers we could be confident to "within 50%". I think in things like bridge building and heart surgery you need slightly better accuracy...
Most OSS projects have a handful of rabid developers who really know the code, and heavily scrutinize (or simply reject) anything anyone else submits. Now could *they* put something malicious into the code? Of course. But if a project is your life, submarining it with malicious code is not generally what you're going to do. The rabid developers generally also have a fair bit of ego, and keeping up a good honest project is the best way to keep boosting that ego.
It's entirely possible that malicious code could be inserted into an OSS project. But it's far more difficult, and far more obvious than in closed-source projects. There, one programmer can make one change, and if the others on the project never look at it too closely, NOBODY will ever see it. The simple fact that someone *could* see your submission to an OSS project keeps out most of the malicious code.
Actually, in other news, spams drops to 0. I mean, if you're going to monitor all emails, I would hope you'd do something useful with that.
Otherwise, one botnet will wash out any use of this program, by drowning it in either false positives or misleading data.