When I was a kid, we used to joust with BMX bikes and two-by-fours.
Always good times to be had with lumber about, handy for jousting and making stilts. Beside the thrill of danger caused by their shoddy construction you could always count on your homemade stilts being a lot taller than those lame ones you could buy at Sears.
I vaguely remember lawn darts from when I was a kid, but we lost the darts pretty fast - so we had to make do with detergent laced gasoline, rock fights, suicidal bike tricks, bb guns, crowbars, tire rope swings, sling shots, pocket knives, and running with scissors.
No one ever died but we did have our share of emergency room visits and suspicious fires.
I think the real damage that has been done to old media news sources is a result of turning news into entertainment. The rot really set in when "Inside Edition" and the like became popular in the late 80s - from that point on the news format gossip program continually edged out actual news. Now commentators and pundits like Moore, Hannity, Franken, and Coulter can assume the mantle of journalism for the credibility, but claim they are entertainment if anyone uses attempts to use facts or logic on them.
What I think might work is to try and preserve some of the verifiability and continuity of identity that naturally exists because of the nature of the old media, and find a way to create it for Internet news sources. Although I'm not sure how much good that would do, as it seems that any quality news source is doomed to be drowned out by demagogues and gossip regardless of the medium.
You seem to be forgetting the late 80s when GE was under a fair amount of public scrutiny because of their involvement in nuclear weapons. There was also a time when quite a few people disliked the Coca-Cola company because of their continued dealings with the SA government during apartheid.
It is rarer these days to find the kind of hatred for a company that MS manages to stir up, but there is certainly a lot of precedent.
The other thing to understand is that MS hatred seems larger and hotter than it really is when viewed from within the confines of computer geek micro-culture. And really only the junior auxiliary posses a seething and unreasoning hatred of MS and all its works.
Maybe I didn't make it clear that I don't trust the bloggers either. A "citizen journalist" has none of the restraints of the traditional journalists profession, because of that they can feel completely justified in using deceit and logical fallacies to convince their audience. I don't think of it quite so much as "everyone can be a reporter and fact checker" as "everyone can be a propagandist and shill".
The old media is nearly useless these days - corrupt and driven by greed, spin and fear. I don't have any faith in new media though because the truth doesn't naturally win out - the story that is accepted is that which has the best presentation and most nearly matches what the hearer wants to be true.
I wish you guys would quit exporting your second rate shit, then!
The thing that is funny is that when Starbucks was a NW company the quality was better, they had a large pool of people with a good amount of coffee shop experience to hire and you didn't wind up with a latte that tasted like dishwater and burnt coffee quite so often.
even all of the traffic out of / into an ISP, but to give analysis of that data is not something I'd like to be tasked with.
Believe it or not there are people who enjoy working on such tasks. There is quite a bit of theory on how deep and what to sample for in depth analyis and how much to surface skim. An in-depth analysis of 1% of traffic might as well be 100% coverage if you are looking to make the Internet useless to people who don't want to be observed.
Isn't this already true for the American "real press"?
And it is not just "People" and junk like like that. Go to the cnn page and you will see the MOTW version of the news - stalkers and kidnappings and scandal. That stuff is very important to the people involved and is very sad, but it is not news - it's gossip. What little real news is present is like baby food, bland, mushy, and inoffensive.
I really have no idea where to get good news - google news is the closest thing I've found, but I wind up wading through so much right wing and left wing crap that it just doesn't seem worth it.
Starbuck's is ok, but I always got the impression that they are the big name because of marketing and locations rather than having a really great product.
Well yeah - Starbucks is nothing but location and marketing. The beans are decent, the milk is scalded (rather than steamed and frothed) 50% of the time and the price is outrageous - it is fast food coffee. I drink it sometimes, but if you come from the northwestern US Starbucks coffee is definitely second rate.
The games business is in a constant feature race. Features cost a lot of money to develop. New and exciting is risky - sequels and licensees provide guaranteed sales and spectacle has always sold well in entertainment.
So people are doing things that are new and exciting - but their efforts generally aren't available for you to buy and probably wouldn't if you could.
Really? How come that 500 years ago, the church had more power than any king? How is it possible that 2000 years ago, slavery was a totally normal thing? Why is being rude a serious offense in Japan, and somehow "cool" in the west?
Of course people are shaped by their experience as a child and the cultural norms - but some things are constant, they may be expressed differently in the local culture but the constants don't change.
I figure it's a culture thing. We over here simply know and understand that spamming is just wrong.
I don't know if I buy that. People are people and engage in profitable criminal activity everywhere it is possible - an explanation that makes more sense to me is that Internet access is more tightly controlled in Europe than in the US. Every American spammer has probably burned through dozens of ISPs and incorporations - I get the impression that such behavior would be nearly impossible in much of Europe.
From the introduction it sounds as though he gave her the common sense knowledge about AV software, spyware, and email safety and it turned out to not be enough. I'd chalk this up at least partially to the MS party line that stupid users are responsible for the rotten state of most home machines.
Just as an aside you should know that modern American husbands don't "let" their wives do as they wish in day to day life, women are no longer the property of their husband - we even let the womenfolk drive, vote, and wear shoes.
I second Pratchett, at his best he is incredible. If buying for a gift I'd suggest staying away from the earliest stuff (which can be so dark and sarcastic they are not enjoyable for many people) and his very latest stuff (which suffers from sickening amounts of American style sentimentality). Good books to start with are probably "Guards, Guards" (Ankh-Morpak night watch), "Soul Music" (Death and his relatives), and "Maskerade" (Lancre witches).
Exactly. MS is providing the OS and competing in the application market, they should be called to task because this sort of behavior is the exact definition of illegal use of a monopoly.
Bush is a bad president and a bad person, but he is not a thug. He was elected according to a defined set of laws, governs by a set of laws, and is subject to replacement by a set of laws. Saddam and thugs like him have no law save might.
I don't care how bad Saddam was myself, unless someone attacks the US I think a full blown invasion is a stupid course to take. There are options for dealing with armed and hostile enemies and Bush failed to seriously consider them. If anything GW2 has merely shown North Korea that nuclear blackmail was the correct road to take in dealing with the US.
Any leader who tortures, imprisons, murders and banishes to stay in power is a thug.
We were lied to about many things, but reputable organizations (other than news agencies) make no bones about there being evidence that Saddam tortured people who displeased him. Civil rights violations on a pretty large scale are being used as an excuse after the WOMD fell through - but I believe that Saddam was a bad leader on a fairly large scale.
Hmm, I may need to start putting some sort of disclaimer in my posts when attempting a joke.
This post is a joke, it may contain exaggeration or outright lies for humorous effect. This post may contain sarcasm, naughty language, puns, lies, mocking speech and anecdotes of a nature unsuitable for young persons. Any resemblance to facts or serious discussion is incidental, accidental, and improbable.
Probably needs some work, but I think the idea is sound.
We got Standard American English, Media English, New England American English, Black English Vernacular, Politically Correct American English, American Corporate English, and 39 other flavors.
What do the Brits have - just standard English and that silly dialect where people call things after other words that rhyme.
Slashdot Mirror
Next year I hear it is going to be google weltschmertz.
Always good times to be had with lumber about, handy for jousting and making stilts. Beside the thrill of danger caused by their shoddy construction you could always count on your homemade stilts being a lot taller than those lame ones you could buy at Sears.
No one ever died but we did have our share of emergency room visits and suspicious fires.
What I think might work is to try and preserve some of the verifiability and continuity of identity that naturally exists because of the nature of the old media, and find a way to create it for Internet news sources. Although I'm not sure how much good that would do, as it seems that any quality news source is doomed to be drowned out by demagogues and gossip regardless of the medium.
You seem to be forgetting the late 80s when GE was under a fair amount of public scrutiny because of their involvement in nuclear weapons. There was also a time when quite a few people disliked the Coca-Cola company because of their continued dealings with the SA government during apartheid.
It is rarer these days to find the kind of hatred for a company that MS manages to stir up, but there is certainly a lot of precedent.
The other thing to understand is that MS hatred seems larger and hotter than it really is when viewed from within the confines of computer geek micro-culture. And really only the junior auxiliary posses a seething and unreasoning hatred of MS and all its works.
Hmm, sounds as though they should have got William Goldman to do the script.
Maybe I didn't make it clear that I don't trust the bloggers either. A "citizen journalist" has none of the restraints of the traditional journalists profession, because of that they can feel completely justified in using deceit and logical fallacies to convince their audience. I don't think of it quite so much as "everyone can be a reporter and fact checker" as "everyone can be a propagandist and shill".
The old media is nearly useless these days - corrupt and driven by greed, spin and fear. I don't have any faith in new media though because the truth doesn't naturally win out - the story that is accepted is that which has the best presentation and most nearly matches what the hearer wants to be true.
The thing that is funny is that when Starbucks was a NW company the quality was better, they had a large pool of people with a good amount of coffee shop experience to hire and you didn't wind up with a latte that tasted like dishwater and burnt coffee quite so often.
Believe it or not there are people who enjoy working on such tasks. There is quite a bit of theory on how deep and what to sample for in depth analyis and how much to surface skim. An in-depth analysis of 1% of traffic might as well be 100% coverage if you are looking to make the Internet useless to people who don't want to be observed.
And it is not just "People" and junk like like that. Go to the cnn page and you will see the MOTW version of the news - stalkers and kidnappings and scandal. That stuff is very important to the people involved and is very sad, but it is not news - it's gossip. What little real news is present is like baby food, bland, mushy, and inoffensive.
I really have no idea where to get good news - google news is the closest thing I've found, but I wind up wading through so much right wing and left wing crap that it just doesn't seem worth it.
Well yeah - Starbucks is nothing but location and marketing. The beans are decent, the milk is scalded (rather than steamed and frothed) 50% of the time and the price is outrageous - it is fast food coffee. I drink it sometimes, but if you come from the northwestern US Starbucks coffee is definitely second rate.
The games business is in a constant feature race. Features cost a lot of money to develop. New and exciting is risky - sequels and licensees provide guaranteed sales and spectacle has always sold well in entertainment.
So people are doing things that are new and exciting - but their efforts generally aren't available for you to buy and probably wouldn't if you could.
Of course people are shaped by their experience as a child and the cultural norms - but some things are constant, they may be expressed differently in the local culture but the constants don't change.
I don't know if I buy that. People are people and engage in profitable criminal activity everywhere it is possible - an explanation that makes more sense to me is that Internet access is more tightly controlled in Europe than in the US. Every American spammer has probably burned through dozens of ISPs and incorporations - I get the impression that such behavior would be nearly impossible in much of Europe.
Just as an aside you should know that modern American husbands don't "let" their wives do as they wish in day to day life, women are no longer the property of their husband - we even let the womenfolk drive, vote, and wear shoes.
I second Pratchett, at his best he is incredible. If buying for a gift I'd suggest staying away from the earliest stuff (which can be so dark and sarcastic they are not enjoyable for many people) and his very latest stuff (which suffers from sickening amounts of American style sentimentality). Good books to start with are probably "Guards, Guards" (Ankh-Morpak night watch), "Soul Music" (Death and his relatives), and "Maskerade" (Lancre witches).
It usually isn't in itself, but Microsoft previously signed a consent decree with the US government that they would not engage in such practices.
Wouldn't do any good. I gave a downmod to Michael a couple years ago and never have got mod points since.
Exactly. MS is providing the OS and competing in the application market, they should be called to task because this sort of behavior is the exact definition of illegal use of a monopoly.
Bush is a bad president and a bad person, but he is not a thug. He was elected according to a defined set of laws, governs by a set of laws, and is subject to replacement by a set of laws. Saddam and thugs like him have no law save might.
I don't care how bad Saddam was myself, unless someone attacks the US I think a full blown invasion is a stupid course to take. There are options for dealing with armed and hostile enemies and Bush failed to seriously consider them. If anything GW2 has merely shown North Korea that nuclear blackmail was the correct road to take in dealing with the US.
Heck I like the SF Channel Dune miniseries better than that schlock that the son slaps the "Dune" name on.
We were lied to about many things, but reputable organizations (other than news agencies) make no bones about there being evidence that Saddam tortured people who displeased him. Civil rights violations on a pretty large scale are being used as an excuse after the WOMD fell through - but I believe that Saddam was a bad leader on a fairly large scale.
What do the Brits have - just standard English and that silly dialect where people call things after other words that rhyme.
Our dialects alone outnumber theirs :)