Where we are now is #3. What I WANT to see is #1 -- but I don't think we're evolved enough to get there yet. Where some authorities and most corporations want to go is #2 -- and they're ice-skating uphill if they try.
I don't usually say this, but... I wish I had mod points. It's like a textbook case for what is meant by 'Insightful'. And rather uplifting, too.
Google, thus far, only has hype:)...and Apple have more of that than Google.
Very astute. Let's add: And an infinitely larger market share in mobile phones, so far.
Google, though, certainly leads in bullshit that never leaves beta, and they absolutely wipe the floor with everybody when it comes to reading and caching personal communications. Yeah, they're obviously so cool, poor Apple, I guess bankruptcy and/or suicide is the only option, yup, uh huh.
However I believe there really is hope for us to turn this around, and that the solution lies in leveraging the internet, encryption, and the same technologies being used now to spy on us. Let's keep finding better ways to protect information, let's keep uncovering the corruption, and let's turn this around before it's too late.
I really admire your optimism and call for taking action. I'm old and am mainly concerned with the sort of World that is taking shape, and its impact on my daughter (and, by extension, younger folks everywhere).
But you brought up encryption. I tried getting into PGP (old versions, Desktop, etc) over the years. I'm on a Mac. But I read the huge intro to the app (I think it was Bruce Schnier, but I'm probably mistaken). I was somewhat confused, to be honest. I had some ultra strong key but was at a loss as to how to proceed. (actually use it in the 'real' World).
As you can see, by my unobfuscated email addy, I am using pretty much the opposite of PGP, currently. If anyone can direct me as to how I can use Desktop, so that groups (yahoo groups, etc) that I contribute to, and other sites that I mostly read, but sometimes respond to, can make sense of what's happening with my text. You know, make it so that newbies could get the decode happening without being whizzes. I would be so grateful.
I had old keys but was very confused about how to override them. Or does it even matter, if I go ahead and create a new key for a few of my email addresses? Is it last in/first out when someone clicks a link to get the public key? I just want to 'sign' some things, but totally encrypt others... with even my simple "Hi, how are ya?" type messages encrypted also. Feasible? And can someone direct me towards an understandable deal, with hints like where to draw the line on the strength of the key, to facilitate this?
I realize this isn't a "How-to" scene, but I weighed the 'off-topic' reality of my questions against the stupidity of not asking so many bright people for advice, and well, sorry if it's off topic, but change begins at home, doesn't it? Thanks.
It is, in places. But the sad fact is, the girls (you know, those 'whores') were somebody's sister or daughter, once, and criminal gangs have a knack for recruiting vulnerable kids into that business.
I accidentally lived next door to a guy I knew, in Montréal, who was a co-owner of an "Escort Agency", and a few of the girls would pop over and have a coffee, or something to eat while they waited for their next 'call.' And they were of age, and 'consenting', but every last one of them was marginalized, or disenfranchised (or had worse familial backgrounds), and it was one sad situation, my friend.
I say we take Carlin to Chino, and rent his asshole out to some guys for a few weeks, and then see how fucking funny he thinks it all is. Fuck that guy.
Yes, it's hypocritical of Spitzer to enforce prostitution laws he was himself violating
I think you have that backwards, or maybe inside out. [Nevertheless, I agree 100% with the gist of your statement in your post]
But, if he had not enforced the law, while in office, because he was breaking the same or other laws, he would have been corrupted by some ethereal allegiance to morality, rather than doing his job. (Which was to investigate and prosecute lawbreakers).
His actions related to his own use of prostitutes were hypocritical, but doing his job (which he was fucking good at, as AG), was not.
I met him in Syracuse and was a volunteer on one of his many campaign-related committees, and was personally very disappointed that he would leave a position that had impact, to assume a (mostly ceremonial) job, that had more downside potential, than upside. And, boy, did he ever plumb the downside.
He probably ran for Governor thinking he'd have an easier ride to the White House by avoiding the Senate (a historical fact, actually, and in modern times, based a lot on the fact that senators have voting records on all sorts of shit that can be dug up and used against them...), and then he caves in to, or (more likely), continues, this sort of behavior. They say smart people do the stupidest things, and, that being said: Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you (probably 'Ex-') Governor Spitzer.
Before the evidence that this was ongoing came to light, my theory was that he was 'acting out' (in a warped fashion) to balance the fall from being a man of some 'power' (based on his effectiveness and popularity with the little people) with having 'ended up' as a somewhat powerless figurehead. But the ongoing nature of it all leads me to believe that perhaps some of his zealotry [as the 'crusading' AG] may, in fact, have been an effort (conscious or not) to 'make up for' publicly, what he was engaged in, privately. An absolute fall from grace, no matter how you slice it, and a terrible thing to lay on his wife and kids. Nobody's perfect, and it's hard to speculate, with certainty, how any one of us might act, in certain areas, given motive and opportunity, but, Eliot, come on man... I rarely get 'worked up', much less 'saddened', when any public figure (Democrat, Republican, Right winger, commie, whatever) fucks up, but this really rocked me, no shit.
I have never enjoyed fishing since then although I eat a lot of fish. Out of sight, out of mind I guess.
if it makes you feel any better, I arrived in San Diego, from Montréal, back in '78, and went out to the pier at Ocean Beach during my first week there, and got to see a fun little episode: Some old timer was sitting on an over-turned bucket, fishing the shallows, with another bucket of water and some fish in it, that he had caught. (They looked like carp, but couldn't have been). Anyway, laying motionless on the dock next to him was a little 5 or 6 inch long dead fish.
I asked him what it was, and he said it was a young sand shark that he had caught about 4 or 5 hours previously. I said, "Oh". After a pause I asked why was it on the dock like that, and he said he wanted it dead, instead of in water, whereupon he reached down, picked it up to remove the hook, forced open the little jaw... and the 'dead' sand shark bit at least the entire last joint off his index finger. So, it works both ways. I think, to make it all kinda complete [in a Mother Nature, Ha Ha way], he got pissed and threw the little guy back in the water.
I don't think you NEED to say you're from the Silicon Valley area
Ha ha, you know that IS funny, but I did High School in Mountain View (Sixties) and it took me years to accept that when people said 'Silicon Valley', that they were talking about all of Santa Clara County (it seemed).
Back in my day it was all about Portola Valley, and where I worked, in the industrial park behind Stanford (off California Ave.)
Hah, I was willing to 'accept' Sunnyvale (mostly because of computer hybrid buddies at Lockheed, the Ames Research & NASA guys, and pals at Atari)... back then, I mean. I left (for good, it looks like) right after Sun Computer opened up shop... yeah, I know, old man:)
Stop fucking whining. Minneapolis is the 11th most wired city in the country, according to that list, and from what I have read Verizon has absolutely no plans on bringing FiOS here.
Yeah, I heard that too. When I lived in Mpls (a block from HCMC) I was on RoadRunner, right up until just after Comcast bought them here. It was okay, still. But I went back to NY for 7 months, and just recently came back to the Cities (Burnsville, actually) and Comcast just blows (down here anyway).
It's a sad state of affairs. A year ago I was running between 800 KBs and slightly over a Meg down (multi-threaded Usenet and NZB drop stuff) and now I see 350-400 KBs (on one of their bogus 'up to 6Mbit' deals). Crazy. I thought about bailing out back to Upstate (NY) after my chemo is done (6-11 mos.) but I like it here, a lot, so it looks like I'll just have to pretend my Internet is in Zimbabwe or someplace, and practice 'acceptance'. Life... it's a regular riot, all right.
Email is a waste of time, agreed. It's not even considered by politicians, but letters, you know, on paper, in envelopes, signed and posted with stamps? That's a different story. For whatever reason, they are taken seriously. I think the 'metric' is: 1 Letter = 2k implied similar viewpoints Why? Don't ask me. I think it has something to do with time, effort, and the general lethargy of the gripers, as a rule... hence a 'rule', of sorts.
Wrong, AC (hint: do a Google search for 'Apple promises iPhone SDK', and go back a few pages). Back in June 2007, Jobs was talking to the NY Times, and one of his admin types said enough to prompt NYTimes to speculate that the SDK, which was obviously coming, at some point, when Apple had sorted out a few issues, was maybe going to be announced at WWDC 2007.
Jobs, himself, said, back in June, that they would make it possible for developers that were writing 'small' apps for the Mac to port them to the iPhone.
I get a kick out of all the Google zealots here ("I like the way they track me and serve me tailored ads!"... Jesus, "I'm a serf and proud" eh?). But most of Google's stuff is in beta forever. They're too busy reading your email to finish shit. Has everybody forgotten 'vaporware'?
Apple keeps their mouths shut and then drops product, lately (last 6 or 7 years), that 'accidentally' redefines markets. There's a fucking shitload of difference between that, and talking up a good game about what a revolution some box will be (while ignoring little shit like: 'assuming' razor-thin-margined manufacturers will just 'pony up', and lock-down crazed Telcos will miraculously decide to roll over, at the same time...etc).
Do some homework, pal, and maybe then you can come out from behind the AC crap. Maybe. Ha ha, maybe when Google takes over the phone biz, or Sanyo becomes the world's largest music distributor, or, hey, when the Leafs win the Cup. Etc.
The only winter power outage of note I can think of offhand was the great Ice Storm of 1998
You know, I was living in Montréal from '78-2001, and, honestly, for the huge number of peoples that weren't there, the Storm is impossible to imagine. Montréal was surrealistic, no kidding. I can't remember even how long power was out, but the darkness of the downtown, and everywhere else, with Army guys out, and all the trees weighted down, grotesquely with endless gobs of ice... it was too much... I had a little ground floor 'loft', on Overdale (heart of downtown), that had a working fireplace, and was cooking, sort of, at home... but, all in all, it was like being on another planet.
Having lived and worked from Van to Montréal, and up in the NWT, I have to say that my impression, going as far back as the early 70s, was that the infrastructure in Canada was seriously impressive. What a terrific place.
I don't know, "fiscally conservative and socially liberal" sounds like a democrat. Republicans are fiscally liberal and socially conservative...
Who gives a fuck? This article is about RIAA and the Court, fuck all this other shit. There are numerous posts marked 'Off Topic' (because they are) and this one is 'interesting' or some other irrelevant 'rank'? Where's the consistency here?
that's just ignorance, like saying my favourite ice-cream flavour is chocolate when I've never tried any other flavour.
You were making sense up until this part, friend.
If an individual picks chocolate every time, regardless of whether that individual has tried others or not, chocolate is, by definition, that individual's 'favorite.' Period. If, on the other hand that same individual, having tried nothing but chocolate, were to declare chocolate is 'the best', or 'better than the rest', well, that individual is an idiot, or something like ignorant, agreed. But a 'favourite' is simply 'that which is opted for more often than not.'
I, on the other hand, have tried dozens of flavours of ice cream, and, I hate to say this (almost) but, chocolate is my favorite... and if one is in the mood for iced cream, and one has a fondness for chocolate, well, then there's a good chance that chocolate ice cream (all things being considered 'equal') would also be 'best.'
Or, look at it this way, if your proverbial ignoramus, having chosen nothing but chocolate, were to be asked, "What's your favorite ice cream flavour?" What would you have them answer? Any answer, besides "chocolate" would, under the circumstances, be a lie, no?
Horses, are sometimes, the 'favourite' in a race, for a couple of reasons: One, the obvious reason, that they are 'picked' by the majority of odds-makers as being most likely to win, and also, even when they are considered not 'the best', compared to some other horse in that day's race, they might be known to perform under that day's track conditions better than the 'other' horse, who, under better (let's say 'normal') conditions, would have been the favourite. Think of it as subjective science.
So you're saying that using a MacBook Air amounts to actively opposing innovation?
Ha ha, funny, but no, not at all. As a matter of fact, I see the Air as being one more minor 'nudge', I hope, at Google, to start thinking seriously about a coast-to-coast wireless situation. The biggest enemies of innovation are the Phone and Cable companies, and their friends in DC, who'd love nothing more than to see the Internet turned into a nice, TV-like, 'read-only' affair.
I'll take a 'pass' on the Air, personally, since trudging around with an old Aluminum Powerbook and a Kensington Trackball is about the only exercise I get.:)
Why does this matter? More importantly, why is it only Microsoft that gets bashed with this argument?
This AC poster is absolutely correct. Why the 'Zero' mod?
Let's include Apple here, while we're at it. I'm a long-time Apple user/buyer (who also ran Ataris, SGI's, and a SPARCstation or two), so I'll come with some facts here: For starters, some of Apple's biggest innovations were, in fact innovative, but they where that came from was in putting a better GUI on top of a product, or combination of products that already existed. With some rough edges developed out, and they were successful at it.
iTunes came from SoundJam, and it was owned by Casady & Greene, a company that had a number of winners, but lacked the money and muscle to take it to the next level.
Going back a bit further, to the Dawn of the age of Desktop Publishing, the one piece of equipment that really ignited this entire industry was the LaserWriter. The "Apple" Laserwriter, right? Sure, it was, that's true. But what was it, really? Answer: About a 50/50 collaboration between Canon and Adobe. One for the hardware (engine) and the other for a little old thing called 'PostScript". Apple drew up a front-end. The rest was history.
Bill Gates knew the guys at Apple were on to something, and it was Jobs that turned down Gates' advice to port to the Intel (way back there) and "take over the World." One of Microsoft's hugest cash cows was a direct result of their writing (heheh, sort of... [laughs]) a couple of apps, at the request of Apple, for Macintosh-only, called Word and Excel. And of course OS X is a great GUI on top of the Mach 2.5 kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University with subsystems from 4.3BSD.
Anyway, AC was right. When I think of innovation I see smart guys, standing on the notebooks of other guys.
MS Office 2007 has been insanely successful at retail.
Although I realize the Macintosh market is pretty small in comparison, I took a two-minute look at Office 2008 (from the Macintosh Business Unit at MS) and dumped Office:Mac 2004, just like that. They've done, as usual, a terrific job over there.
I grabbed the Standard version. Entourage is much improved (over here in Mac-land, at least), the newer 'main' fonts in Word (across the suite, really) are cleaner and tighter than the workhorses that they are replacing, and the menus and toolbars are relevant and easily negotiated. It's a winner, there's no two ways about it.
It's easy to 'hate' Microsoft, but with the regulatory and judiciary toads sitting on their own asses, who can blame MS for doing what they were all but encouraged to do? A company is expected to be profit-oriented, and 'by any means necessary' is the American Way. Just look around. But the regulators and Courts have no imperial/capitalist 'excuse'. Shame on them.
Even if Google got out of the personal info spy/data-hoarding biz and canceled all their eternally 'in-beta' projects, and went full tilt at the desktop, LAN-and WAN-based publishing, market they could never deal a productivity suite like Office. They wouldn't get near MS's Help and tutorials, either. But then again, so what? They have their own cash cow and the blind trust of millions who are feeding them data, so they don't 'need' an Office suite, do they?
Yahoo's in trouble. On the Mac they just don't cut it. The worst spam filtering on the planet, a mish-mash of messenger versions, etc.
My wild guess on the MS/Yahoo idea? The easy part is: Yahoo's on the ropes. But maybe the MS economics guys sense that MSFT has approached a 'top' in terms of it's stock's value, which is when smart companies like to use inflated stock, rather than cash, to buy up the other guys. Heheh, so if you see an announcement that Google is splitting 2 or 3 for 1, call your broker with market orders to sell; That is, of course, as long as the big switches aren't already jammed. (There was a serious 'bump' in orders of big Nortel switches by guys like Fidelity Investments, in the very late 90s, and lo and behold...)
Also, on a side note, the amount of 'cash' MS has at their disposal is probably dwarfed by other liquid investments. They won't be borrowing for a while, unless the interest rate they're offered is lower than the income on their investments.
fuck you. Push was a real person. he was my friend.
My friend, I'm in my 50s and have lost numerous, wonderful people to suicides, and a few to tragic accidents, stretching back nearly 30 years now. So, make no mistake, I understand how you feel, because i remember the feeling. But what you are doing here (in perfectly reasonable fashion, in my opinion) is you are comparing your internal feelings with the external, 'quasi-intellectual' appearance of the original poster's comments. This is very poor spot for any of us to be in. Feelings and cognitive interpretations of our surroundings (including what we read) are two totally different subjects, with totally alien dynamics.
This is difficult to describe. But there is no way to rationalize the 'gap' between your sincere feelings and some other person's intellectual statement(which, being devoid of your emotional AND intellectual experience,must be, by default, callous.
The original poster, for all we know, may have had zero intention of being disrespectful, to your friend, personally. And further, making humor in the face of tragedy could indicate a whole world of possibilities as to why the poster contributed his/her 'humor.' We don't know anything about the person's motives, at all. In view of that, our duty is not to crumble, but to go forth, accepting, as distasteful as it is, that life can be cruel, and, that we must carry on 'as if' it will work out, somehow, or maybe even 'make sense' someday (but don't bank on it).
My advice? Make no assumptions about anything, and forgive the poster for not sharing your reverence for your own, valid feelings, and carry on with your own life. I am no expert at this, trust me, but my readings have illuminated, in detail, the fact that suicide is an incredibly dense, perplexing, and troubling event, with a huge variety of judgments (of a moral, ethical, and legal nature) and assessments attached to it. Don't take it upon yourself to find 'resolution.' Merely resolve to live, as difficult as it is, at some point, for all of us, and as impossible as it must seem, tragically, prematurely, for some of us. Good luck.
Attn: <PirateBay> As Requested: Schaum's Outline of Complaint [01/05] "pissinwind.part01.rar" Attn: <PirateBay> As Requested: Schaum's Outline of Complaint [02/05] "pissinwind.part02.rar" Attn: <PirateBay> As Requested: Schaum's Outline of Complaint [03/05] "pissinwind.part03.rar" Attn: <PirateBay> As Requested: Schaum's Outline of Complaint [04/05] "pissinwind.part04.rar" Attn: <PirateBay> As Requested: Schaum's Outline of Complaint [05/05] "pissinwind.part05.rar"
choice quote 'when being chased by a gang of rednecks'
Thanks. I remember him, now, but vaguely. So, since we're helping our Yank friends (whether deserved or not:) ) could someone explain the Paul McC reference in the sub-head? Still leaning toward ignorance over here. Thanks.
For instance, suppose Exchange/Outlook encrypt all mail by default, and get blocked as "suspicious" traffic. MS simply adds a private key digital signature to all messages, and the big backbone providers allow an exemption if the content is signed by something on a white list.
Ah Yes!! I like it!
And then the next thing you know, the FAQs on the Usenet groups will start saying stuff like, "Don't use Agent, use Outlook to avoid dropped parts." heheh, that'll be fun. Then, about two weeks later... the Leafs win the Cup!"
But we all know that the world is the US, right? What you don't see doesn't exist, right?
Whoa, hold your camels, Osama! No sense painting the whole shitty world (even if your myopia has convinced you that the shitty part is confined to the not-really-monolithic USA) with the same brush, there, Ivan. I worked on a big Windows net, Horst, with guys that flew, and every one of them was a Mac user at home, and, no shit Ricardo, believe it or not, Hans, we were in the Sci & Tech Bldg at SU (yup, that SU, with Dennis Ritchie, in the house), and all the laptops out in the halls ran Linux, okay, Pierre, or was it Pyotr, Pedro, Pietro?
How does your company manage to block the summary, but not the discussion?
Who knows? And it's doubtful they even did block the "summary". But he was asking about TFA, not the summary... sounds like he wanted to read the actual article (what a weirdo, eh?), and to quote "... the company blocked the article..." (i.e. the target of the link to the article IN the summary)
That is a big gain for the Linux desktop, even if it isn't generating the kind of real world returns people might like at this point.
Absolutely. Look at the percentages. It's a bigger jump than the Apple market share. I'm amazed that so many Linux fans (not fan boys, just adherents) haven't seen the obvious math there, until this far down in the posts. If the percentages 'play out', Linux looks 'serious' on the desktop, and Apple plateaus at some point. I want them both to be enormously successful.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't usually say this, but... I wish I had mod points. It's like a textbook case for what is meant by 'Insightful'. And rather uplifting, too.
Very astute. Let's add: And an infinitely larger market share in mobile phones, so far.
Google, though, certainly leads in bullshit that never leaves beta, and they absolutely wipe the floor with everybody when it comes to reading and caching personal communications. Yeah, they're obviously so cool, poor Apple, I guess bankruptcy and/or suicide is the only option, yup, uh huh.
I really admire your optimism and call for taking action. I'm old and am mainly concerned with the sort of World that is taking shape, and its impact on my daughter (and, by extension, younger folks everywhere).
But you brought up encryption. I tried getting into PGP (old versions, Desktop, etc) over the years. I'm on a Mac. But I read the huge intro to the app (I think it was Bruce Schnier, but I'm probably mistaken). I was somewhat confused, to be honest. I had some ultra strong key but was at a loss as to how to proceed. (actually use it in the 'real' World).
As you can see, by my unobfuscated email addy, I am using pretty much the opposite of PGP, currently. If anyone can direct me as to how I can use Desktop, so that groups (yahoo groups, etc) that I contribute to, and other sites that I mostly read, but sometimes respond to, can make sense of what's happening with my text. You know, make it so that newbies could get the decode happening without being whizzes. I would be so grateful.
I had old keys but was very confused about how to override them. Or does it even matter, if I go ahead and create a new key for a few of my email addresses? Is it last in/first out when someone clicks a link to get the public key? I just want to 'sign' some things, but totally encrypt others... with even my simple "Hi, how are ya?" type messages encrypted also. Feasible? And can someone direct me towards an understandable deal, with hints like where to draw the line on the strength of the key, to facilitate this?
I realize this isn't a "How-to" scene, but I weighed the 'off-topic' reality of my questions against the stupidity of not asking so many bright people for advice, and well, sorry if it's off topic, but change begins at home, doesn't it? Thanks.
It is, in places. But the sad fact is, the girls (you know, those 'whores') were somebody's sister or daughter, once, and criminal gangs have a knack for recruiting vulnerable kids into that business.
I accidentally lived next door to a guy I knew, in Montréal, who was a co-owner of an "Escort Agency", and a few of the girls would pop over and have a coffee, or something to eat while they waited for their next 'call.' And they were of age, and 'consenting', but every last one of them was marginalized, or disenfranchised (or had worse familial backgrounds), and it was one sad situation, my friend.
I say we take Carlin to Chino, and rent his asshole out to some guys for a few weeks, and then see how fucking funny he thinks it all is. Fuck that guy.
I think you have that backwards, or maybe inside out. [Nevertheless, I agree 100% with the gist of your statement in your post]
But, if he had not enforced the law, while in office, because he was breaking the same or other laws, he would have been corrupted by some ethereal allegiance to morality, rather than doing his job. (Which was to investigate and prosecute lawbreakers).
His actions related to his own use of prostitutes were hypocritical, but doing his job (which he was fucking good at, as AG), was not.
I met him in Syracuse and was a volunteer on one of his many campaign-related committees, and was personally very disappointed that he would leave a position that had impact, to assume a (mostly ceremonial) job, that had more downside potential, than upside. And, boy, did he ever plumb the downside.
He probably ran for Governor thinking he'd have an easier ride to the White House by avoiding the Senate (a historical fact, actually, and in modern times, based a lot on the fact that senators have voting records on all sorts of shit that can be dug up and used against them...), and then he caves in to, or (more likely), continues, this sort of behavior. They say smart people do the stupidest things, and, that being said: Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you (probably 'Ex-') Governor Spitzer.
Before the evidence that this was ongoing came to light, my theory was that he was 'acting out' (in a warped fashion) to balance the fall from being a man of some 'power' (based on his effectiveness and popularity with the little people) with having 'ended up' as a somewhat powerless figurehead. But the ongoing nature of it all leads me to believe that perhaps some of his zealotry [as the 'crusading' AG] may, in fact, have been an effort (conscious or not) to 'make up for' publicly, what he was engaged in, privately. An absolute fall from grace, no matter how you slice it, and a terrible thing to lay on his wife and kids. Nobody's perfect, and it's hard to speculate, with certainty, how any one of us might act, in certain areas, given motive and opportunity, but, Eliot, come on man... I rarely get 'worked up', much less 'saddened', when any public figure (Democrat, Republican, Right winger, commie, whatever) fucks up, but this really rocked me, no shit.
It's called Betrayal.
if it makes you feel any better, I arrived in San Diego, from Montréal, back in '78, and went out to the pier at Ocean Beach during my first week there, and got to see a fun little episode: Some old timer was sitting on an over-turned bucket, fishing the shallows, with another bucket of water and some fish in it, that he had caught. (They looked like carp, but couldn't have been). Anyway, laying motionless on the dock next to him was a little 5 or 6 inch long dead fish.
I asked him what it was, and he said it was a young sand shark that he had caught about 4 or 5 hours previously. I said, "Oh". After a pause I asked why was it on the dock like that, and he said he wanted it dead, instead of in water, whereupon he reached down, picked it up to remove the hook, forced open the little jaw... and the 'dead' sand shark bit at least the entire last joint off his index finger. So, it works both ways. I think, to make it all kinda complete [in a Mother Nature, Ha Ha way], he got pissed and threw the little guy back in the water.
Ha ha, you know that IS funny, but I did High School in Mountain View (Sixties) and it took me years to accept that when people said 'Silicon Valley', that they were talking about all of Santa Clara County (it seemed).
Back in my day it was all about Portola Valley, and where I worked, in the industrial park behind Stanford (off California Ave.)
Hah, I was willing to 'accept' Sunnyvale (mostly because of computer hybrid buddies at Lockheed, the Ames Research & NASA guys, and pals at Atari)... back then, I mean. I left (for good, it looks like) right after Sun Computer opened up shop... yeah, I know, old man :)
Yeah, I heard that too. When I lived in Mpls (a block from HCMC) I was on RoadRunner, right up until just after Comcast bought them here. It was okay, still. But I went back to NY for 7 months, and just recently came back to the Cities (Burnsville, actually) and Comcast just blows (down here anyway).
It's a sad state of affairs. A year ago I was running between 800 KBs and slightly over a Meg down (multi-threaded Usenet and NZB drop stuff) and now I see 350-400 KBs (on one of their bogus 'up to 6Mbit' deals). Crazy. I thought about bailing out back to Upstate (NY) after my chemo is done (6-11 mos.) but I like it here, a lot, so it looks like I'll just have to pretend my Internet is in Zimbabwe or someplace, and practice 'acceptance'. Life... it's a regular riot, all right.
Email is a waste of time, agreed. It's not even considered by politicians, but letters, you know, on paper, in envelopes, signed and posted with stamps? That's a different story. For whatever reason, they are taken seriously. I think the 'metric' is:
1 Letter = 2k implied similar viewpoints
Why? Don't ask me. I think it has something to do with time, effort, and the general lethargy of the gripers, as a rule... hence a 'rule', of sorts.
Wrong, AC (hint: do a Google search for 'Apple promises iPhone SDK', and go back a few pages). Back in June 2007, Jobs was talking to the NY Times, and one of his admin types said enough to prompt NYTimes to speculate that the SDK, which was obviously coming, at some point, when Apple had sorted out a few issues, was maybe going to be announced at WWDC 2007.
Jobs, himself, said, back in June, that they would make it possible for developers that were writing 'small' apps for the Mac to port them to the iPhone.
I get a kick out of all the Google zealots here ("I like the way they track me and serve me tailored ads!"... Jesus, "I'm a serf and proud" eh?). But most of Google's stuff is in beta forever. They're too busy reading your email to finish shit. Has everybody forgotten 'vaporware'?
Apple keeps their mouths shut and then drops product, lately (last 6 or 7 years), that 'accidentally' redefines markets. There's a fucking shitload of difference between that, and talking up a good game about what a revolution some box will be (while ignoring little shit like: 'assuming' razor-thin-margined manufacturers will just 'pony up', and lock-down crazed Telcos will miraculously decide to roll over, at the same time...etc).
Do some homework, pal, and maybe then you can come out from behind the AC crap. Maybe. Ha ha, maybe when Google takes over the phone biz, or Sanyo becomes the world's largest music distributor, or, hey, when the Leafs win the Cup. Etc.
You know, I was living in Montréal from '78-2001, and, honestly, for the huge number of peoples that weren't there, the Storm is impossible to imagine. Montréal was surrealistic, no kidding. I can't remember even how long power was out, but the darkness of the downtown, and everywhere else, with Army guys out, and all the trees weighted down, grotesquely with endless gobs of ice... it was too much... I had a little ground floor 'loft', on Overdale (heart of downtown), that had a working fireplace, and was cooking, sort of, at home... but, all in all, it was like being on another planet.
Having lived and worked from Van to Montréal, and up in the NWT, I have to say that my impression, going as far back as the early 70s, was that the infrastructure in Canada was seriously impressive. What a terrific place.
You were making sense up until this part, friend.
If an individual picks chocolate every time, regardless of whether that individual has tried others or not, chocolate is, by definition, that individual's 'favorite.' Period. If, on the other hand that same individual, having tried nothing but chocolate, were to declare chocolate is 'the best', or 'better than the rest', well, that individual is an idiot, or something like ignorant, agreed. But a 'favourite' is simply 'that which is opted for more often than not.'
I, on the other hand, have tried dozens of flavours of ice cream, and, I hate to say this (almost) but, chocolate is my favorite... and if one is in the mood for iced cream, and one has a fondness for chocolate, well, then there's a good chance that chocolate ice cream (all things being considered 'equal') would also be 'best.'
Or, look at it this way, if your proverbial ignoramus, having chosen nothing but chocolate, were to be asked, "What's your favorite ice cream flavour?" What would you have them answer? Any answer, besides "chocolate" would, under the circumstances, be a lie, no?
Horses, are sometimes, the 'favourite' in a race, for a couple of reasons: One, the obvious reason, that they are 'picked' by the majority of odds-makers as being most likely to win, and also, even when they are considered not 'the best', compared to some other horse in that day's race, they might be known to perform under that day's track conditions better than the 'other' horse, who, under better (let's say 'normal') conditions, would have been the favourite. Think of it as subjective science.
Ha ha, funny, but no, not at all. As a matter of fact, I see the Air as being one more minor 'nudge', I hope, at Google, to start thinking seriously about a coast-to-coast wireless situation. The biggest enemies of innovation are the Phone and Cable companies, and their friends in DC, who'd love nothing more than to see the Internet turned into a nice, TV-like, 'read-only' affair.
I'll take a 'pass' on the Air, personally, since trudging around with an old Aluminum Powerbook and a Kensington Trackball is about the only exercise I get. :)
This AC poster is absolutely correct. Why the 'Zero' mod?
Let's include Apple here, while we're at it. I'm a long-time Apple user/buyer (who also ran Ataris, SGI's, and a SPARCstation or two), so I'll come with some facts here: For starters, some of Apple's biggest innovations were, in fact innovative, but they where that came from was in putting a better GUI on top of a product, or combination of products that already existed. With some rough edges developed out, and they were successful at it.
iTunes came from SoundJam, and it was owned by Casady & Greene, a company that had a number of winners, but lacked the money and muscle to take it to the next level.
Going back a bit further, to the Dawn of the age of Desktop Publishing, the one piece of equipment that really ignited this entire industry was the LaserWriter. The "Apple" Laserwriter, right? Sure, it was, that's true. But what was it, really? Answer: About a 50/50 collaboration between Canon and Adobe. One for the hardware (engine) and the other for a little old thing called 'PostScript". Apple drew up a front-end. The rest was history.
Bill Gates knew the guys at Apple were on to something, and it was Jobs that turned down Gates' advice to port to the Intel (way back there) and "take over the World." One of Microsoft's hugest cash cows was a direct result of their writing (heheh, sort of... [laughs]) a couple of apps, at the request of Apple, for Macintosh-only, called Word and Excel. And of course OS X is a great GUI on top of the Mach 2.5 kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University with subsystems from 4.3BSD.
Anyway, AC was right. When I think of innovation I see smart guys, standing on the notebooks of other guys.
Although I realize the Macintosh market is pretty small in comparison, I took a two-minute look at Office 2008 (from the Macintosh Business Unit at MS) and dumped Office:Mac 2004, just like that. They've done, as usual, a terrific job over there.
I grabbed the Standard version. Entourage is much improved (over here in Mac-land, at least), the newer 'main' fonts in Word (across the suite, really) are cleaner and tighter than the workhorses that they are replacing, and the menus and toolbars are relevant and easily negotiated. It's a winner, there's no two ways about it.
It's easy to 'hate' Microsoft, but with the regulatory and judiciary toads sitting on their own asses, who can blame MS for doing what they were all but encouraged to do? A company is expected to be profit-oriented, and 'by any means necessary' is the American Way. Just look around. But the regulators and Courts have no imperial/capitalist 'excuse'. Shame on them.
Even if Google got out of the personal info spy/data-hoarding biz and canceled all their eternally 'in-beta' projects, and went full tilt at the desktop, LAN-and WAN-based publishing, market they could never deal a productivity suite like Office. They wouldn't get near MS's Help and tutorials, either. But then again, so what? They have their own cash cow and the blind trust of millions who are feeding them data, so they don't 'need' an Office suite, do they?
Yahoo's in trouble. On the Mac they just don't cut it. The worst spam filtering on the planet, a mish-mash of messenger versions, etc.
My wild guess on the MS/Yahoo idea? The easy part is: Yahoo's on the ropes. But maybe the MS economics guys sense that MSFT has approached a 'top' in terms of it's stock's value, which is when smart companies like to use inflated stock, rather than cash, to buy up the other guys. Heheh, so if you see an announcement that Google is splitting 2 or 3 for 1, call your broker with market orders to sell; That is, of course, as long as the big switches aren't already jammed. (There was a serious 'bump' in orders of big Nortel switches by guys like Fidelity Investments, in the very late 90s, and lo and behold...)
Also, on a side note, the amount of 'cash' MS has at their disposal is probably dwarfed by other liquid investments. They won't be borrowing for a while, unless the interest rate they're offered is lower than the income on their investments.
My friend, I'm in my 50s and have lost numerous, wonderful people to suicides, and a few to tragic accidents, stretching back nearly 30 years now. So, make no mistake, I understand how you feel, because i remember the feeling. But what you are doing here (in perfectly reasonable fashion, in my opinion) is you are comparing your internal feelings with the external, 'quasi-intellectual' appearance of the original poster's comments. This is very poor spot for any of us to be in. Feelings and cognitive interpretations of our surroundings (including what we read) are two totally different subjects, with totally alien dynamics.
This is difficult to describe. But there is no way to rationalize the 'gap' between your sincere feelings and some other person's intellectual statement(which, being devoid of your emotional AND intellectual experience,must be, by default, callous.
The original poster, for all we know, may have had zero intention of being disrespectful, to your friend, personally. And further, making humor in the face of tragedy could indicate a whole world of possibilities as to why the poster contributed his/her 'humor.' We don't know anything about the person's motives, at all. In view of that, our duty is not to crumble, but to go forth, accepting, as distasteful as it is, that life can be cruel, and, that we must carry on 'as if' it will work out, somehow, or maybe even 'make sense' someday (but don't bank on it).
My advice? Make no assumptions about anything, and forgive the poster for not sharing your reverence for your own, valid feelings, and carry on with your own life. I am no expert at this, trust me, but my readings have illuminated, in detail, the fact that suicide is an incredibly dense, perplexing, and troubling event, with a huge variety of judgments (of a moral, ethical, and legal nature) and assessments attached to it. Don't take it upon yourself to find 'resolution.' Merely resolve to live, as difficult as it is, at some point, for all of us, and as impossible as it must seem, tragically, prematurely, for some of us. Good luck.
Maybe when BitTorrent starts coming down on the guys with the crappy sample rates... They could start there, er, end there, or something
Thanks. I remember him, now, but vaguely. So, since we're helping our Yank friends (whether deserved or not :) ) could someone explain the Paul McC reference in the sub-head? Still leaning toward ignorance over here. Thanks.
Ah Yes!! I like it!
And then the next thing you know, the FAQs on the Usenet groups will start saying stuff like, "Don't use Agent, use Outlook to avoid dropped parts." heheh, that'll be fun. Then, about two weeks later... the Leafs win the Cup!"
Whoa, hold your camels, Osama! No sense painting the whole shitty world (even if your myopia has convinced you that the shitty part is confined to the not-really-monolithic USA) with the same brush, there, Ivan. I worked on a big Windows net, Horst, with guys that flew, and every one of them was a Mac user at home, and, no shit Ricardo, believe it or not, Hans, we were in the Sci & Tech Bldg at SU (yup, that SU, with Dennis Ritchie, in the house), and all the laptops out in the halls ran Linux, okay, Pierre, or was it Pyotr, Pedro, Pietro?
Who knows? And it's doubtful they even did block the "summary". But he was asking about TFA, not the summary... sounds like he wanted to read the actual article (what a weirdo, eh?), and to quote "... the company blocked the article..." (i.e. the target of the link to the article IN the summary)
Absolutely. Look at the percentages. It's a bigger jump than the Apple market share. I'm amazed that so many Linux fans (not fan boys, just adherents) haven't seen the obvious math there, until this far down in the posts. If the percentages 'play out', Linux looks 'serious' on the desktop, and Apple plateaus at some point. I want them both to be enormously successful.