It's not a "bad thing" until it is abused. We just have to understand how easily it can be abused. It's abuse when the money spent does not benefit the majority, but instead rewards groups of people (aka "special interests") who voted for the politician or gave him money. The reason this works is that even though the majority may not get something from any one particular spending program, they know that sooner or later they will get theirs (especially if they scream loud enough).
Of course they won't hassle the casual seller to begin with, but after they see how much money is coming in, they WILL extend the law to include everybody who sells. Government's addiction to your money knows no bounds.
Whenever a law is voted on, the first thing to consider is how it will work when taken to the extreme.
Just be careful about which 3rd party inks you buy. Some can cause wicked clogs on the printhead. Read some of the reviews at dpreview before you choose one. I've found that the inks from MIS Associates at inksupply.com work great with my Canon i860 and i950.
You can save a little more money by using Office Depot brand glossy photo paper. It's as good as Canon's expensive glossy paper. I have some prints on OD paper that are three years old and they still look very good (no fading yet).
Go find a musician who owns an iPod or similar device. Then ask him if he actually bought all the music he has on it. Chances are he didn't. I know a lot of musicians and they use P2P to download songs just like the rest of us.
since installing SP2 is that Windows Media Player (version 10) won't run at all. I've read everything and tried everything that I could find (from MS and others), but nothing helps.
I don't consider it to be much of a loss since there are better players out there.
I was talking to a non-geek friend of mine last night. This guy is probably about your average Joe Sixpack type. Anyway, I told him that the photos of my son's wedding were on my site if he wanted to see them. He said that with his system being filled with viruses, spam, popups, & spyware, it had slowed down to the point of being practically useless. Most times he couldn't even get online. They had reached the point of not even bothering to turn it on.
I told him about programs that could get rid of the junk, but it was like I was speaking a foreign language. He asked for help, but he lives about 60 miles away and I'm not going in that direction any time soon.
So, for him and his wife, there is no internet now. It makes you wonder how many people there are out there that have just given up.
There are still a lot of dot matrix impact printers out there. Businesses like them because they can print several copies at once. The place I have the oil changed in my truck still uses one.
The short life of so many inkjet printers means that if they're going to trace some of the ones we've owned, they'll have to go look in the landfill.:-)
I'm a candlemaker and the thought of patents on smells worries me. A lot of the fragrances I use are essentially copies of designer fragrances. I can't use the name because it's trademarked, but I can call it something similar or just say it's a "type". If the very smell itself is patented, we're pretty much out of business. If Yankee Candle patented, say, the smell of vanilla, then nobody could make a vanila-scented candle.
Already the large candle companies are trademarking names for their fragrances right and left. Some are so generic that one wonders if the trademark is legal, e.g. Lemonade, Chocolate Brownie, Honeysuckle, and Frosted Cookie.
My main thought was that this is like closing the barn door after the horses have got out.
Some of those you listed are already available to some organizations and/or businesses. For example, a private investigator can easily get his hands on your personal information. Any business doing background checks on employees can also get it. Credit reporting agencies give out your info to anyone with the ability to do a credit check. The Social Security Administration is only a little better at protecting your info. The news media seem to have no trouble getting arrest reports and they're always getting "leaks" about ongoing investigations.
The ones dealing with national security, of course, shouldn't be made public. But with just the street maps, topo maps, and aerial photos already easily available (not to mention just driving around), a terrorist has pretty much all he needs to target vunerable spots. The news media tells the enemy all about troop movements and our nuclear secrets were sold or stolen long ago.
As a country, we're nearly wide open for most anything. I work in the natural gas business and I travel quite a bit within my own state. Gas regulator stations are unprotected, as are electric power substations; it only takes a little bit of damage to shut these down. Major bridges on our interstate system could be taken out with very little effort. We protect our government buildings, but our schools, malls, churches, and hospitals are sitting ducks for things like the truck bomb used in Oklahoma City. A handful of determined people with explosives could cripple this country.
If the database was paid for with tax money, then it should be available to the taxpayers. Besides, as others have pointed out, the same information is already available in a form that would be useful to terrorists.
I use USAPhotoMaps to access the terraserver. I have a database of aerial photos and topo maps of all the areas I work (nearly my whole state). The resolution of the photos is 1 meter per pixel and for the topo maps it's 4 meters per pixel. That info plus a program to show streets and roads makes my job much easier.
Re:It all depends on your needs...
on
Less Might Be More
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· Score: 2, Insightful
That makes sense. My system is an 850 MHz Thunderbird, 640 MB ram, an ATI 8500 AIW card, and a couple of 7200 rpm drives. It's a lot more responsive than machines
I've worked on that are 2 or 3 times faster.
I don't have a whole lot of crap running that I don't need; the system tray is nearly bare compared to some I've seen. Changing XP's ugly gui to the classic one helps a hell of a lot, too.
As a running experiment, I have people sit down and use my computer without knowing what's inside. Then I ask them how fast they think the cpu is. They invariably guess 2 GHz or faster. It's just a fine-tuned machine.
I'm planning my next computer right now and I can't wait to build it to see how fast I can make it run.
I have XM in my truck because I travel and work in places that don't get a clear FM or AM signal. I can drive 500 miles and never have to change the station. Plus, XM has news/talk channels, CNBC, FoxNews, CNN, The Weather Channel, Comedy, etc...
I considered getting Sirius, but XM had Art Bell and George Noory. Now I can drive down the road wearing my tin foil hat!
That's what I was thinking, too, but with a potential for being slashdotted, maybe he was wise to not put bigger images on the page. His site has held up remarkably well.
They want us to view the ads as many times as possible, but the nicer sites will have a link to a "printer friendly" page where the article is all on one page.
I pay my bills the same month I get 'em . . . different year, but the same month.
Seriously, I agree with you 100%. I work in the natural gas business and gas utilities will tell you that the same people show up on the disconnect list every month. Some people will claim that they don't have the money, but they seem to have plenty of money for big screen TVs, beer, cigarettes, lottery tickets, etc. Some people just have no concept of personal responsibility.
If you ever find yourself in a bad financial situation, the best thing to do is call the companies you owe before you get behind. It's amazing how tolerant they can be if you're honest with them.
Experience has taught me to always wait until all (or most) of the bugs have been found. My system is working, so why should I intentionally screw it up if I don't have to?
My keyboard has no Windows key and I don't want one with a Tux, either. The location is in the wrong place for typing. I've tried a keyboard with a Windows key and the first thing I had to do was get rid of it; I kept hitting it instead of the shift key.
I would have thought that 18 out of 19 AOLosers users would click the links. Hell, they click everything else that comes up, including viruses in email.
It's to the point that if somebody wants me to work on their computer and they're an AOL user, I refuse and tell them why. It's not just because of AOL; it's just that anybody stupid enough to use AOL would let all kinds of crap (spyware, etc.) get installed on their systems. And if you uninstall anything, they scream and say, "I needed that!"
Slashdot Mirror
It's not a "bad thing" until it is abused. We just have to understand how easily it can be abused. It's abuse when the money spent does not benefit the majority, but instead rewards groups of people (aka "special interests") who voted for the politician or gave him money. The reason this works is that even though the majority may not get something from any one particular spending program, they know that sooner or later they will get theirs (especially if they scream loud enough).
Agreed. If there's anything that voters need to learn, it's that everything a politician in office does is to get re-elected.
Of course they won't hassle the casual seller to begin with, but after they see how much money is coming in, they WILL extend the law to include everybody who sells. Government's addiction to your money knows no bounds.
Whenever a law is voted on, the first thing to consider is how it will work when taken to the extreme.
Well, it's the funniest thing I've read all day. But, the day isn't over yet and chances are this story will show up here again.
All it really is is a greedy corporation teaming up with a control-freak superintendent.
Yes, and can you say "kickbacks"? I would really like to subpoena that guy's bank records.
would have been the worst day of the year. It has been for me for the last several years.
Don't pee in mi casa, please.
Just be careful about which 3rd party inks you buy. Some can cause wicked clogs on the printhead. Read some of the reviews at dpreview before you choose one. I've found that the inks from MIS Associates at inksupply.com work great with my Canon i860 and i950.
You can save a little more money by using Office Depot brand glossy photo paper. It's as good as Canon's expensive glossy paper. I have some prints on OD paper that are three years old and they still look very good (no fading yet).
Go find a musician who owns an iPod or similar device. Then ask him if he actually bought all the music he has on it. Chances are he didn't. I know a lot of musicians and they use P2P to download songs just like the rest of us.
Oh, but it's okay if they do it.
since installing SP2 is that Windows Media Player (version 10) won't run at all. I've read everything and tried everything that I could find (from MS and others), but nothing helps.
I don't consider it to be much of a loss since there are better players out there.
Ditto. Even with the problems that could arise from voting absentee, I still prefer voting that way.
I was talking to a non-geek friend of mine last night. This guy is probably about your average Joe Sixpack type. Anyway, I told him that the photos of my son's wedding were on my site if he wanted to see them. He said that with his system being filled with viruses, spam, popups, & spyware, it had slowed down to the point of being practically useless. Most times he couldn't even get online. They had reached the point of not even bothering to turn it on.
I told him about programs that could get rid of the junk, but it was like I was speaking a foreign language. He asked for help, but he lives about 60 miles away and I'm not going in that direction any time soon.
So, for him and his wife, there is no internet now. It makes you wonder how many people there are out there that have just given up.
There are still a lot of dot matrix impact printers out there. Businesses like them because they can print several copies at once. The place I have the oil changed in my truck still uses one.
:-)
The short life of so many inkjet printers means that if they're going to trace some of the ones we've owned, they'll have to go look in the landfill.
I'm a candlemaker and the thought of patents on smells worries me. A lot of the fragrances I use are essentially copies of designer fragrances. I can't use the name because it's trademarked, but I can call it something similar or just say it's a "type". If the very smell itself is patented, we're pretty much out of business. If Yankee Candle patented, say, the smell of vanilla, then nobody could make a vanila-scented candle.
Already the large candle companies are trademarking names for their fragrances right and left. Some are so generic that one wonders if the trademark is legal, e.g. Lemonade, Chocolate Brownie, Honeysuckle, and Frosted Cookie.
Mine would have a really nasty virus attached to it and a note that says, "Now you can fix your own damned computer!"
My main thought was that this is like closing the barn door after the horses have got out.
Some of those you listed are already available to some organizations and/or businesses. For example, a private investigator can easily get his hands on your personal information. Any business doing background checks on employees can also get it. Credit reporting agencies give out your info to anyone with the ability to do a credit check. The Social Security Administration is only a little better at protecting your info. The news media seem to have no trouble getting arrest reports and they're always getting "leaks" about ongoing investigations.
The ones dealing with national security, of course, shouldn't be made public. But with just the street maps, topo maps, and aerial photos already easily available (not to mention just driving around), a terrorist has pretty much all he needs to target vunerable spots. The news media tells the enemy all about troop movements and our nuclear secrets were sold or stolen long ago.
As a country, we're nearly wide open for most anything. I work in the natural gas business and I travel quite a bit within my own state. Gas regulator stations are unprotected, as are electric power substations; it only takes a little bit of damage to shut these down. Major bridges on our interstate system could be taken out with very little effort. We protect our government buildings, but our schools, malls, churches, and hospitals are sitting ducks for things like the truck bomb used in Oklahoma City. A handful of determined people with explosives could cripple this country.
If the database was paid for with tax money, then it should be available to the taxpayers. Besides, as others have pointed out, the same information is already available in a form that would be useful to terrorists.
I use USAPhotoMaps to access the terraserver. I have a database of aerial photos and topo maps of all the areas I work (nearly my whole state). The resolution of the photos is 1 meter per pixel and for the topo maps it's 4 meters per pixel. That info plus a program to show streets and roads makes my job much easier.
That makes sense. My system is an 850 MHz Thunderbird, 640 MB ram, an ATI 8500 AIW card, and a couple of 7200 rpm drives. It's a lot more responsive than machines I've worked on that are 2 or 3 times faster.
I don't have a whole lot of crap running that I don't need; the system tray is nearly bare compared to some I've seen. Changing XP's ugly gui to the classic one helps a hell of a lot, too.
As a running experiment, I have people sit down and use my computer without knowing what's inside. Then I ask them how fast they think the cpu is. They invariably guess 2 GHz or faster. It's just a fine-tuned machine.
I'm planning my next computer right now and I can't wait to build it to see how fast I can make it run.
I have XM in my truck because I travel and work in places that don't get a clear FM or AM signal. I can drive 500 miles and never have to change the station. Plus, XM has news/talk channels, CNBC, FoxNews, CNN, The Weather Channel, Comedy, etc...
I considered getting Sirius, but XM had Art Bell and George Noory. Now I can drive down the road wearing my tin foil hat!
That's what I was thinking, too, but with a potential for being slashdotted, maybe he was wise to not put bigger images on the page. His site has held up remarkably well.
They want us to view the ads as many times as possible, but the nicer sites will have a link to a "printer friendly" page where the article is all on one page.
I pay my bills the same month I get 'em . . . different year, but the same month.
Seriously, I agree with you 100%. I work in the natural gas business and gas utilities will tell you that the same people show up on the disconnect list every month. Some people will claim that they don't have the money, but they seem to have plenty of money for big screen TVs, beer, cigarettes, lottery tickets, etc. Some people just have no concept of personal responsibility.
If you ever find yourself in a bad financial situation, the best thing to do is call the companies you owe before you get behind. It's amazing how tolerant they can be if you're honest with them.
Experience has taught me to always wait until all (or most) of the bugs have been found. My system is working, so why should I intentionally screw it up if I don't have to?
My keyboard has no Windows key and I don't want one with a Tux, either. The location is in the wrong place for typing. I've tried a keyboard with a Windows key and the first thing I had to do was get rid of it; I kept hitting it instead of the shift key.
Big clumsy fingers I guess.
one in 19 of AOL users clicks the links
I would have thought that 18 out of 19 AOLosers users would click the links. Hell, they click everything else that comes up, including viruses in email.
It's to the point that if somebody wants me to work on their computer and they're an AOL user, I refuse and tell them why. It's not just because of AOL; it's just that anybody stupid enough to use AOL would let all kinds of crap (spyware, etc.) get installed on their systems. And if you uninstall anything, they scream and say, "I needed that!"