So you start with the incorrect premise that school boards are Federal, then proceed from there. In fact, school boards are elected, run in each county, and do their own purchasing.
Subsidiarity is a tenet of Catholic social teaching, by the way, one of the most centralized and top down of all bureaucracies. So it's ironic that you brought it up.
Since your premise was wrong, suffice to say I disagree with you.
I hope they don't speed the connection up, I hope they're able to slow it down! Think ultimate storage medium, the only limit being the number of photons you can put in the length of a pipe.
Running out of storage space? Hello sweet superposition! Yeah, my iPod stores 4.02 * 10^18 songs, but have to listen to them all in order.
The 33.5G capacity of these disks (or the 58G capacity of the future) competition is too small for typical backups in comparison to current hard drive capacities.
By the time these penetrate the market to a significant extent hard drives will be typically over 400 or 500 gigabytes. And yes they hopefully will come out with higher capacity disks for computing, but the reason that the CD and DVD drives price point was so advantageous was that they were massed produced for consumer and computing needs.
One of the reasons for the success of CD's was that they were 640M, which was a pretty good ratio for drive backups at the time. Huge, in fact. But this ratio of disk/HD space is too small.
So in conclusion, we'll need a 640 Gigabyte disk to really grab our attention.
Too many people think that "Bush is the first president to fund stem cell research" and "these were umbilical stem cells, and, uh, have nothing to do with embryonic stem cells!"
The fact is, California alone gave $3 billion for research into this. Bush claims to have donated $25 million -- translated, California gave 120 times the amount that the Bush talkingpointists trumpet.
Then Bush said that there were something like 75 stem cell lines, and it turned out that something like 60 were garbage and entirely unusuable, and the last 15 might be useful, or might be contaminated.
As for "Bush was the first one... etc." -- considering that stem cells started to show real promise in 1999 and 2000, it's not too surprising that the previous research funding wasn't broken out separately. It IS offensive to me that the were so many restrictions on research to put us behind the South Koreans and to bury Christopher Reeves.
And to those who claim that "well these were not embryonic stem cells!" No one here can get to stage 2 before starting at stage one, which is embryonic.
Clearly we must give these IVF embryos the respect they deserve -- by throwing them in the garbage rather than saving lives.
You can see that that the "Bush was first" stuff is false here:
In August 2000, HHS, under President Clinton's leadership, published new guidelines for research using human embryos. These guidelines create a loophole that essentially claims if privately funded scientists destroy the embryos and extract their stem cells, government-funded scientists can conduct experiments with those stem cells without violating the federal ban. 9
On August 9, 2001, President Bush announced he would reject the Clinton Administration's guidelines and only allow federal dollars for research on approximately 60 existing embryonic stem cell lines already created in privately funded laboratories.10 The president outlined four conditions for the use of existing cell lines:
* The embryos were destroyed and the cell lines were created before the August 9 speech
* The embryos were among the "excess" frozen embryos stored in fertility clinics created through in vitro fertilization for reproductive purposes
* The parents gave their consent for the embryo to be destroyed
* The parents were not offered any financial incentive in return for donating the embryo 11
Did you even think about what you said?? Put cables in the water pipes. OK! What happens when you need to fix a peice of cable? Oh yea, turn off the water to that pipe. Great idea. Idiot.
You're talking the distance from the manhole to the basement,
which is between valves anyway . This would prevent the need to trench for most cases. If you need to repair the cable, you can either refeed it (most likely) or then trench.
I find it funny that people on this thread are so averse to feeding it through water pipes because (gasp) they may need to trench. In other words, still avoiding what they're doing for each house right now. (!)
I especially enjoyed the comment about plastic leeching into water pipes and water resistant fiber being expensive. First off, water pipes are made of plastic right now -- second off, if you're buying special fiber I'm sure that it's a
lot cheaper than trenching!
But the most priceless comment is that that underwater splitters are expensive. To avoid trenching you only need to go from the manhole to the house -- and if you're needing splitters in that thirty feet, maybe you need to reexamine the network structure.
Why on Earth are they digging trenches that might open sewer lines, might hit power lines, might hit water lines when the wise man would get a contract with the city and run the fiber through the water line itself.
It would be far faster, it would be far cheaper than digging trenches, and it would be fair easier to pop a fitting inside the house to extract the fiber from the incoming pipe than digging an entire trench!
If you want to watch DRM content on Linux, just wait a few months, watch the deadlines get extended and the cards return to the manufacturing line. Or, like regional DVD's, wait for the gray market DRMless chips to be produced.
HDTV is not going to take over the market, mandates or not, or even be a years long overnight success. The fact is the public follows the broadcasters, and the broadcasters follow the public. With only a few percent market penetration HDTV can only exist side by side with existing services, not replace them.
Mandate all you want about DRM or HDTV broadcasts, and while you're at it, mandate that pi=3, and that g=9, it's still not going to make much of a difference. The deadlines will be extended, and HDTV will continue to be reserved for a minority of channels of the cable and satellite broadcasters for at least the next half decade, simply because there's limited bandwidth.
Go ahead government, make our tv's stop working. We dare you. As for the DRM side, by the time that HDTV's actually do have a majority of the market the DRM will be cracked open, with the yellow encryption key yolk spilling out on the floor.
I've been working for some time now on hacking my toilet. Basically some previous person had installed a "low flush system" into a high flush toilet which is very, very bad for pressure. Those who have this "serpent" configuration will sympathize.
So I've been working on "improving" the toilet with various weights and countermeasures so that the water will submerge the low flush system but not overfill the tank.
If you look at how a toilet is designed, you'll see it's actually quite brilliant. Most designs use the water itself as a counterweight to keep the valve open -- quite ingenious actually. But this only works if the tank is exerting the right pressure, otherwise as soon as you lift the handle, the valve closes.
And for those of us with four or five death logs sticking six inches past the rim it's either hack the toilet or use the plunger as a club -- "Die! Die! Die! Why! Won't! You! Go! Down!"
Anyway, that's what I'D like to see. Umm... because of my girlfriend. (*cough*)
When Kinberg showed the police sergeant how the bicycle used a non-permanent spray chalk, the sergeant seemed to agree that it wasn't defacement, at which point Kinberg asked, "am I free to go?" After conferring about it, officers decided to call superiors, then came back moments later to place Kinberg under arrest and confiscate the bicycle.
Kinberg cooperated fully with the officers as he was being handcuffed, only asking, "can I ask what I'm being arrested for?" to which no one provided an answer. As of 11:00 PM Saturday evening, he was still in custody without being charged with anything.
I've noticed that dissent is becoming less and less tolerated. If you're not for us, you're against us. It's fairly clear that water soluble chalk will not meet the minimum requirements for "vandalism" and you can see above that even the arresting officer had doubts about this arrest.
The changes are coming fast and furiously. The DMCA, restrictions on freedom of speech. Has anyone else that by contrast to the 1960's we don't need to protest FOR change, at this point we need to protest to prevent these weekly changes that are intended to reduce our rights?
Think about it.
This is a major difference. We're on the defensive. That cannot be a good sign.
In related news, universe discovered to have hot flashes and missing matter.
(ba da bish!)
Next Cosmo: Male scientists say universe is growing at a steady rate with Heliopause. Female scientists disagree and say male scientists are lazy and don't help clean around the observatory and to just shut the hell up anyway. Also in issue: newborn discovers milky way.
Like Science? Enjoy details? Then this may not be the film for you.
I saw it yesterday and the thing that stands out most in my mind, granted I'm a geek, but when the fusion reaction goes out of control -- critical in fact, and starts magnetically sucking all metal towards itself and fusionically threatens the entire city!?
That's right, I said fusion.
It appears that one of the basic requirements for writing a film these days (and I like to write) is to have not only no knowledge of science, but preferably a vacous gaping city sucking fusion orb where even the most basic science knowledge should be.
Also a complete lack of knowledge of trains is helpful. You might notice an elevated line that is built to go two stories to a dead end at... THE RIVER. Exactly where are the engineers? The physicists? Were you all killed by Doctor Octopus?
And where is Ozcorp getting its never ending funding from? Why wasn't this stock shorted by everyone after their CHIEF SCIENTIST went nuts in the last movie and started killing people? These are details that could have been written into the film, but instead are just thrown away in favor of cliches.
The other things that actually save this film from the dreck pile are 1) the performance of J.K. Simmons (the angry editor guy), who once again steals every scene that he's in, on top of being strongly written. (every time that Tobey is in the newspaper office he might as well be invisible.) Meanwhile, Alfred Molina (Doctor Octopus) does a stellar job with second rate lines. Now he is an interesting character -- and, unlike spidey, his CG didn't look fake. Why not make a film about him rather than the bland kid in the spider suit?
Romance is one of the things that saves this film -- because make no mistake about it it's the exact same formula that you've seen and know and love. If you like that film that you've seen a dozen times -- this is it too! Now with extra romance. It's fun for what it is, but don't expect more than cliches.
Is it just me, or isn't there so much more that could be done with film?
I use packet8 for my sole "landline." It cost me something like $20 or so which included a free DTA, with the first month free BUT you have to use a referral code to get this deal. (I think I used SAM, but I can't remember -- you can just Google for "referral code packet8" and I'm sure you'll find dozens.)
The $20 a month gave me unlimited calls anywhere in quote-unquote North America (step back Mexico - you're not part of North America anymore, the phone companies have deleted you.) Of course you can use the phone anywhere in the world, but you can only call Canada and the US for free with the $20 plan. But even the long distance rates are very reasonable -- for me to phone Norway is only something like 2 cents a minute.
The problem with the phone isn't the service, or which VOIP provider to choose -- it's the internet connection it's running on. If you're internet connection has a few hiccups here and there, or if you're just physically far away, your QOS will be shot. I recommend posting a follow up question of "Which ISP is best for VOIP?" Latency is a big issue, of course. Even some of the ISP's route occasionally via satellite, and that's just great for VOIP connections (great for VOIP connections... what?...connections... bzzzzzzzzzt... what? Hello? Son of a...!)
My conclusion is: it's okay, and it's a cheap phone. There are some sacrifices. And Packet8 is loads cheaper than Vonage and includes free equipment, or at least used to. Plus you don't have to deal with the bastards at the phone company anymore, which makes any sacrifice worth it! Hurray! But for $20 a month and no long distance, go for it, just use the referral code to save being screwed on "installation." If you just want to try it for a while, try Free World Dialup until you're comfortable -- although that's a lot more complicated to set up versus a ready to run system like Packet8 or Vonage. Good luck.
Diebold will appeal this to the 9th circuit court, which will uphold the law... The supreme court will then overrule the 9th circuit, as usual, and also as usual allow the plaintiff free reign to not only disregard the new law but to throw out any common sense related to the law and set a precedent for wide open fleecing of the American voter. Don't believe me? Here's a couple of examples:
9th Circuit Rules in Favor of Medical Marijuana (overruled by SC)
9th Circuit Votes that Recall Election must be postponed (overruled by SC)
Well, you get the idea. They are the most overruled court in the land.
By the end of this case, the Supreme Court will have Diebold sitting on the board of the California Elections commission and charging voters $5 to vote. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but forgive my cynicism -- this isn't nearly over yet.
Okay, let's apply this to the current "standard method of terrorizing the United States" which is Saudi terrorists in planes, or car bombs.
Everybody knew that the government would do security checks on people booking one way economy tickets with cash, and that's (duh!) why the Saudi terrorists booked return tickets, first class and paid for them with credit cards. And this is the issue with all these "we mean well but we have no idea what to do" initiatives. Everybody knew that, they knew that.
And now, everybody will know about the fingerprinting, and they'll know that too.
If fingerprinting was applied to the current "standard model" of terrorists flying planes, should we find a piece of a terrorist's finger, we would successfully be able to indentify said finger after he kills hundreds or thousands of people. This is the perfect technology for tracking terrorists post facto. Solves nothing, and is expensive.
How does this make anyone safer? I'm not sure either. I suppose it helps secure the borders -- against those with records -- so the next terrorists will be those with no records. Problem solved (for the terrorists.)
Oh yes, and it will injure the tourism industry, which previously had produced $582 billion dollars in the economy. This hurt the economy while doing nothing against terrorism. Congratulations to the administration for thinking this up.
This is just a lease, except that at the end of this lease you have no option to purchase, you surrender all end of contract ownership rights and you lose the tax write off that comes with a lease.
So, in short, no ownership, no migration path (except if Microsoft feels like it), no lease write offs, and you get to pay rent.
Do landlords generally improve an apartment after you move in? Not usually. They figure, you're in so why bother. These companies better get used to the leaky toilet.
At least if you're renting you only have to move apartments. The first time a company wants to discontinue "software assurance" they're going to realize that moving to a new apartment is a whole lot easier than moving every single pc and server to a different OS or to finance purchasing of all software everywhere in the company.
In short it's a choice that only an MBA could love. (Want to put your company out of business? Create an expense where none existed before!)
Microsoft has long been feared by members of Hollywood and consumer electronics companies for its competitive practices. The thinking has been that if Microsoft were to gain a foothold in their business that it would eventually seize control by charging outlandish licensing fees for its technology.
"All those fears were on their mind," Majidimehr said. "At the end of the day they said, We're going to trust Microsoft."
Now, forgive me from laughing at that, but my mind is wandering towards the various ways that Microsoft will exploit this for their own gain:
1) They can increase the licence fees on the new DVD-9 standard. That's not ineffective because once endorsed and DVDs are released, all players will have to support (and pay) for Microsoft's DVD-9 even if other formats are supported.
2) They will 'extend' the standard. You can see this coming, can't you? "New DVD-9.1 with extra tracks that are only accessible if you buy Microsoft's new dvd player/software/media unit... etc. etc." This is pretty predictable.
3) They will offer discounts for those players that remove support for the other standards, thus forcing DVD producers to produce in the only format guaranteed to be multiplayer. Again, pretty predictable -- it's what they always do.
4) They will patent the transmission of "over the air" DVD-9, so any future Tivo like device will have to pay royalties.
I could go on, but you see where Microsoft's going with this. It's a horrible, horrible decision for the DVD steering committee. They've just voted themselves into the guillotine. "Trust Microsoft" -- sheesh!
This post will probably never be seen, but Bill Gates has given nothing to charity, only his foundation has. This makes a big difference since he can write all this off as charitable donations. Oh yes, and guess who sits on the board of his "charitable trust?" Right. His family. They draw very nice salaries plus expenses. You paid for it!
For example -- the donation to the Boys and Girls clubs. $100 million, they claimed. In fact, it was something like $80 million dollars in software and $20 in cash. So he is out of pocket only $20 million, but he gets a writeoff of the FULL RETAIL VALUE of the software! In other words, if he's writing the "$100 million" off at 50% deduction (1985 it was 50%, in 1986 it was 100%), then he just made $30 million off the backs of joe taxpayer. That's YOUR money he's "donating."
We should all gather around him and say "Thank you sir, may I have another?!?"
The worst part is that people actually think that he's giving significantly to charity. According to Salon, he gave $600 million since 1994. That's right, that was his first charitable donation. 1994. That's not even $80 million a year if you add it up on a company which will soon have a thousand times that much in the bank. How many years was he a BILLIONAIRE before he gave his FIRST charitable donation?
If we had any sense, we'd be running this guy off the plan for our new "never return" Mars mission.
Yes, he's very clever. Yes he's managed to use every single rule, and break many, to his advantage. But the idea that anyone would honor this criminal astonishes me.
1) Stop violating the law and pay restitution to each and every company that has been damaged and run out of business by Microsoft's immoral business practices.
2) Rescind the patent for the "long file name."
3) Have Bill Gates and the current management team resign from the company.
4) Drop your prices for your Office suite and OS to zero dollars and zero cents (plus or minus zero) to make it competitive.
5) Do not release your code until it's done, so security can be improved (like some open source projects are able to do).
6) Remove the requirements enter authentication codes and product keys. (Many open source products don't require this.)
7) Use open protocols and stop trying to sabotage everything to make a buck.
8) Try and improve your dismal reputation for shoddy work.
9) When making a charitable contribution cease donating "in-kind" the value of software given just so you can fleece the taxpayers of the tax deduction.
10) God forbid, pay some federal income tax you dirtbags.
11) In short, there is nothing you can do. Have a nice day.
I agree with the parent -- It's a fantastic idea. For everybody who likes the idea of bittorrent but has run into the dreaded problem of the tracker server refusing connections or just getting bogged down this is a life saver.
The key to understanding is that the DNS information that is supplied by the tracker (the torrent server) will be cached all around the world thus eliminating the endless amount of tracker server overload that we all see.
For the previous hundred flamers: the actual file is not being handled by DNS, only the tracking information which is tiny. So please, relax.
Now, can someone please figure out a way to create a real-time streaming bittorrent? I would like to see tv stations via streaming realtime bittorrent. Can someone start a bounty on this?
As an expert on stupidity (I have worked for many stupid people over the years, and have often been one myself) I can make some recommendations.
I have now become the "stupid manager" of my small but growing business and I've realized that I just have to remember what my stupid bosses did over the years, and don't do what they did. Sounds easy, but it isn't. I just saw OfficeSpace again. I saw a little of myself. I was afraid.
Bosses like improvements. Radical change. Go faster, go faster. They tend to like this because that's how they got where they are -- right or wrong they tend to have hard driving personalities. Employees don't like constant change, in my opinion. No one likes coming to work and finding a new policy on their desk about their TPS report cover sheets. Change is useless much of the time.
I call this "overbehaviour." Doing something -- anything -- because it... just needs to be improved! Most improvements aren't.
So now that I'm the boss I'm trying to change as little as possible. Try and keep things in a rhythm and ask people to help come up with ideas. Not for internal processes, but for products. And then, give control of that idea to the guy who came up with it. It's his baby, let him nurture it. Let him take credit for it. People tend to live up or down to your expectations.
The little company that I have been starting has a product that is "one of a kind." I've been starting this company now for six years.
The idea is somewhat linear, just applying software on a large scale to an area which has never had it before, but the execution is vastly more difficult.
Through luck and creativity, it appears that I've found various ways to execute this. Two and a half years to build one part of the software, another couple of years of building and testing, two years of working for "the man" to pay off my debts run up during the first four years.
Now I've got this fairly decent product which I've just started to roll out to some large customers. And I've had many people sign NDA's along the way. If they are violated, would I have the money to pursue the violators? No, of course not. So that makes them worthless, right?
No, they're not, because people don't know that I don't have the money to fight. So NDA's are just a harmless bluff for me and probably everyone else. But in the interests of thoroughness I should use them.
Yes they're useless. Yes you should use them. Not everything has to be useful to be used.
In the old days, up until 1870, the patent office required models to accompany a patent application.
1836 --
The Patent Act of July 4, 1836 reestablished the examination system of 1790. Models were once again required by the Commissioner. "The model, not more than 12 inches square, should be neatly made, the name of the inventor should be printed or engraved upon, or affixed to it, in a durable manner."
It was left to the commissioner of patents on whether or not he wanted to request a model. This case absolutely screams to the model requirement. In my opinion, for technology patents certainly, a person should not be able to patent something that they have no model for.
Microsoft is probably the least able to produce this product. Translation software? Show us that you have this technology. (Yeah right.) You want to translate on the fly on text filled with abbreviations and slang?
Okay, show us that you can do this. Show us your model (AND make it no more than 12 inches square!). Given their record breaking incompetence, there is no way in God's green acres that Microsoft has this technology workable or will have it in the near future.
Maybe a commissioner of patents write in campaign would fix all of these software problems up?
Open Office and other open source programs are getting popular more slowly than expected because of a lack of talking points. Microsoft uses this technique almost daily about their products and about their competitors. These are one line that sums up (sometimes incorrectly) the feature or the point that they want the customer to remember. Microsoft's current talking points that they want to keep in the press are "Linux has a risk of lawsuits. Be careful."
This article nicely summed up a talking point:
"Did you know that Open Office can convert word files to PDF for free?" is a great one.
Another would be:
"Did you know that that program Mozilla gets rid of pop up ads?", or;
"Did you know that Google, the largest search engine, uses that open source Linux?"
The more these are posted and said, the more managers and decision makers will notice. They are simple and memorable (and as Microsoft has noticed, they don't even have to be true.) For good fun, use Microsoft's techniques against them.
Now that we know roughly the length of this "infringement" it should be possible to locate the code segment itself.
Would someone be so kind as to compare the files and locate a duplicate section of about 80 lines? This way we can begin to locate who added the source. The best defence is a good offence, after all.
Imagine that we pull out the 80 lines in the next few days (infringement or not) and replace them and send them off to the distros. The case is closed right there.
Plus, we can publish the lines, show the world that SCO is either lying or donated the code themselves, and shut down this smear campaign before it even starts.
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Subsidiarity is a tenet of Catholic social teaching, by the way, one of the most centralized and top down of all bureaucracies. So it's ironic that you brought it up.
Since your premise was wrong, suffice to say I disagree with you.
I hope they don't speed the connection up, I hope they're able to slow it down! Think ultimate storage medium, the only limit being the number of photons you can put in the length of a pipe.
Running out of storage space? Hello sweet superposition! Yeah, my iPod stores 4.02 * 10^18 songs, but have to listen to them all in order.
Not only will you not hit the snooze button, but you get to hear the doppler effect each morning!
By the time these penetrate the market to a significant extent hard drives will be typically over 400 or 500 gigabytes. And yes they hopefully will come out with higher capacity disks for computing, but the reason that the CD and DVD drives price point was so advantageous was that they were massed produced for consumer and computing needs.
One of the reasons for the success of CD's was that they were 640M, which was a pretty good ratio for drive backups at the time. Huge, in fact. But this ratio of disk/HD space is too small.
So in conclusion, we'll need a 640 Gigabyte disk to really grab our attention.
The fact is, California alone gave $3 billion for research into this. Bush claims to have donated $25 million -- translated, California gave 120 times the amount that the Bush talkingpointists trumpet.
Then Bush said that there were something like 75 stem cell lines, and it turned out that something like 60 were garbage and entirely unusuable, and the last 15 might be useful, or might be contaminated.
As for "Bush was the first one... etc." -- considering that stem cells started to show real promise in 1999 and 2000, it's not too surprising that the previous research funding wasn't broken out separately. It IS offensive to me that the were so many restrictions on research to put us behind the South Koreans and to bury Christopher Reeves.
And to those who claim that "well these were not embryonic stem cells!" No one here can get to stage 2 before starting at stage one, which is embryonic.
Clearly we must give these IVF embryos the respect they deserve -- by throwing them in the garbage rather than saving lives.
You can see that that the "Bush was first" stuff is false here:
In August 2000, HHS, under President Clinton's leadership, published new guidelines for research using human embryos. These guidelines create a loophole that essentially claims if privately funded scientists destroy the embryos and extract their stem cells, government-funded scientists can conduct experiments with those stem cells without violating the federal ban. 9
On August 9, 2001, President Bush announced he would reject the Clinton Administration's guidelines and only allow federal dollars for research on approximately 60 existing embryonic stem cell lines already created in privately funded laboratories.10 The president outlined four conditions for the use of existing cell lines:
* The embryos were destroyed and the cell lines were created before the August 9 speech
* The embryos were among the "excess" frozen embryos stored in fertility clinics created through in vitro fertilization for reproductive purposes
* The parents gave their consent for the embryo to be destroyed
* The parents were not offered any financial incentive in return for donating the embryo 11
You're talking the distance from the manhole to the basement, which is between valves anyway . This would prevent the need to trench for most cases. If you need to repair the cable, you can either refeed it (most likely) or then trench.
I find it funny that people on this thread are so averse to feeding it through water pipes because (gasp) they may need to trench. In other words, still avoiding what they're doing for each house right now. (!)
I especially enjoyed the comment about plastic leeching into water pipes and water resistant fiber being expensive. First off, water pipes are made of plastic right now -- second off, if you're buying special fiber I'm sure that it's a lot cheaper than trenching!
But the most priceless comment is that that underwater splitters are expensive. To avoid trenching you only need to go from the manhole to the house -- and if you're needing splitters in that thirty feet, maybe you need to reexamine the network structure.
So, back to your pro-trench flaming!
It would be far faster, it would be far cheaper than digging trenches, and it would be fair easier to pop a fitting inside the house to extract the fiber from the incoming pipe than digging an entire trench!
They have knowledge but they don't have wisdom.
Mandate all you want about DRM or HDTV broadcasts, and while you're at it, mandate that pi=3, and that g=9, it's still not going to make much of a difference. The deadlines will be extended, and HDTV will continue to be reserved for a minority of channels of the cable and satellite broadcasters for at least the next half decade, simply because there's limited bandwidth.
Go ahead government, make our tv's stop working. We dare you. As for the DRM side, by the time that HDTV's actually do have a majority of the market the DRM will be cracked open, with the yellow encryption key yolk spilling out on the floor.
Relax mon!
So I've been working on "improving" the toilet with various weights and countermeasures so that the water will submerge the low flush system but not overfill the tank.
If you look at how a toilet is designed, you'll see it's actually quite brilliant. Most designs use the water itself as a counterweight to keep the valve open -- quite ingenious actually. But this only works if the tank is exerting the right pressure, otherwise as soon as you lift the handle, the valve closes.
And for those of us with four or five death logs sticking six inches past the rim it's either hack the toilet or use the plunger as a club -- "Die! Die! Die! Why! Won't! You! Go! Down!"
Anyway, that's what I'D like to see. Umm... because of my girlfriend. (*cough*)
When Kinberg showed the police sergeant how the bicycle used a non-permanent spray chalk, the sergeant seemed to agree that it wasn't defacement, at which point Kinberg asked, "am I free to go?" After conferring about it, officers decided to call superiors, then came back moments later to place Kinberg under arrest and confiscate the bicycle.
Kinberg cooperated fully with the officers as he was being handcuffed, only asking, "can I ask what I'm being arrested for?" to which no one provided an answer. As of 11:00 PM Saturday evening, he was still in custody without being charged with anything.
I've noticed that dissent is becoming less and less tolerated. If you're not for us, you're against us. It's fairly clear that water soluble chalk will not meet the minimum requirements for "vandalism" and you can see above that even the arresting officer had doubts about this arrest.
The changes are coming fast and furiously. The DMCA, restrictions on freedom of speech. Has anyone else that by contrast to the 1960's we don't need to protest FOR change, at this point we need to protest to prevent these weekly changes that are intended to reduce our rights?
Think about it. This is a major difference. We're on the defensive. That cannot be a good sign.
In related news, universe discovered to have hot flashes and missing matter.
(ba da bish!)
Next Cosmo: Male scientists say universe is growing at a steady rate with Heliopause. Female scientists disagree and say male scientists are lazy and don't help clean around the observatory and to just shut the hell up anyway. Also in issue: newborn discovers milky way.
(ba da bish!)
Hey hey! I'm here all week, just like the veal.
I saw it yesterday and the thing that stands out most in my mind, granted I'm a geek, but when the fusion reaction goes out of control -- critical in fact, and starts magnetically sucking all metal towards itself and fusionically threatens the entire city!?
That's right, I said fusion.
It appears that one of the basic requirements for writing a film these days (and I like to write) is to have not only no knowledge of science, but preferably a vacous gaping city sucking fusion orb where even the most basic science knowledge should be.
Also a complete lack of knowledge of trains is helpful. You might notice an elevated line that is built to go two stories to a dead end at... THE RIVER. Exactly where are the engineers? The physicists? Were you all killed by Doctor Octopus?
And where is Ozcorp getting its never ending funding from? Why wasn't this stock shorted by everyone after their CHIEF SCIENTIST went nuts in the last movie and started killing people? These are details that could have been written into the film, but instead are just thrown away in favor of cliches. The other things that actually save this film from the dreck pile are 1) the performance of J.K. Simmons (the angry editor guy), who once again steals every scene that he's in, on top of being strongly written. (every time that Tobey is in the newspaper office he might as well be invisible.) Meanwhile, Alfred Molina (Doctor Octopus) does a stellar job with second rate lines. Now he is an interesting character -- and, unlike spidey, his CG didn't look fake. Why not make a film about him rather than the bland kid in the spider suit?
Romance is one of the things that saves this film -- because make no mistake about it it's the exact same formula that you've seen and know and love. If you like that film that you've seen a dozen times -- this is it too! Now with extra romance. It's fun for what it is, but don't expect more than cliches.
Is it just me, or isn't there so much more that could be done with film?
The $20 a month gave me unlimited calls anywhere in quote-unquote North America (step back Mexico - you're not part of North America anymore, the phone companies have deleted you.) Of course you can use the phone anywhere in the world, but you can only call Canada and the US for free with the $20 plan. But even the long distance rates are very reasonable -- for me to phone Norway is only something like 2 cents a minute.
The problem with the phone isn't the service, or which VOIP provider to choose -- it's the internet connection it's running on. If you're internet connection has a few hiccups here and there, or if you're just physically far away, your QOS will be shot. I recommend posting a follow up question of "Which ISP is best for VOIP?" Latency is a big issue, of course. Even some of the ISP's route occasionally via satellite, and that's just great for VOIP connections (great for VOIP connections... what? ...connections... bzzzzzzzzzt... what? Hello? Son of a ...!)
My conclusion is: it's okay, and it's a cheap phone. There are some sacrifices. And Packet8 is loads cheaper than Vonage and includes free equipment, or at least used to. Plus you don't have to deal with the bastards at the phone company anymore, which makes any sacrifice worth it! Hurray! But for $20 a month and no long distance, go for it, just use the referral code to save being screwed on "installation." If you just want to try it for a while, try Free World Dialup until you're comfortable -- although that's a lot more complicated to set up versus a ready to run system like Packet8 or Vonage. Good luck.
Diebold will appeal this to the 9th circuit court, which will uphold the law... The supreme court will then overrule the 9th circuit, as usual, and also as usual allow the plaintiff free reign to not only disregard the new law but to throw out any common sense related to the law and set a precedent for wide open fleecing of the American voter. Don't believe me? Here's a couple of examples:
9th Circuit Rules in Favor of Medical Marijuana (overruled by SC)
9th Circuit Votes that Recall Election must be postponed (overruled by SC)
Well, you get the idea. They are the most overruled court in the land.
By the end of this case, the Supreme Court will have Diebold sitting on the board of the California Elections commission and charging voters $5 to vote. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but forgive my cynicism -- this isn't nearly over yet.
Okay, let's apply this to the current "standard method of terrorizing the United States" which is Saudi terrorists in planes, or car bombs. Everybody knew that the government would do security checks on people booking one way economy tickets with cash, and that's (duh!) why the Saudi terrorists booked return tickets, first class and paid for them with credit cards. And this is the issue with all these "we mean well but we have no idea what to do" initiatives. Everybody knew that, they knew that. And now, everybody will know about the fingerprinting, and they'll know that too. If fingerprinting was applied to the current "standard model" of terrorists flying planes, should we find a piece of a terrorist's finger, we would successfully be able to indentify said finger after he kills hundreds or thousands of people. This is the perfect technology for tracking terrorists post facto. Solves nothing, and is expensive. How does this make anyone safer? I'm not sure either. I suppose it helps secure the borders -- against those with records -- so the next terrorists will be those with no records. Problem solved (for the terrorists.) Oh yes, and it will injure the tourism industry, which previously had produced $582 billion dollars in the economy. This hurt the economy while doing nothing against terrorism. Congratulations to the administration for thinking this up.
So, in short, no ownership, no migration path (except if Microsoft feels like it), no lease write offs, and you get to pay rent.
Do landlords generally improve an apartment after you move in? Not usually. They figure, you're in so why bother. These companies better get used to the leaky toilet.
At least if you're renting you only have to move apartments. The first time a company wants to discontinue "software assurance" they're going to realize that moving to a new apartment is a whole lot easier than moving every single pc and server to a different OS or to finance purchasing of all software everywhere in the company.
In short it's a choice that only an MBA could love. (Want to put your company out of business? Create an expense where none existed before!)
"All those fears were on their mind," Majidimehr said. "At the end of the day they said, We're going to trust Microsoft."
Now, forgive me from laughing at that, but my mind is wandering towards the various ways that Microsoft will exploit this for their own gain:
1) They can increase the licence fees on the new DVD-9 standard. That's not ineffective because once endorsed and DVDs are released, all players will have to support (and pay) for Microsoft's DVD-9 even if other formats are supported.
2) They will 'extend' the standard. You can see this coming, can't you? "New DVD-9.1 with extra tracks that are only accessible if you buy Microsoft's new dvd player/software/media unit... etc. etc." This is pretty predictable.
3) They will offer discounts for those players that remove support for the other standards, thus forcing DVD producers to produce in the only format guaranteed to be multiplayer. Again, pretty predictable -- it's what they always do.
4) They will patent the transmission of "over the air" DVD-9, so any future Tivo like device will have to pay royalties.
I could go on, but you see where Microsoft's going with this. It's a horrible, horrible decision for the DVD steering committee. They've just voted themselves into the guillotine. "Trust Microsoft" -- sheesh!
This post will probably never be seen, but Bill Gates has given nothing to charity, only his foundation has. This makes a big difference since he can write all this off as charitable donations. Oh yes, and guess who sits on the board of his "charitable trust?" Right. His family. They draw very nice salaries plus expenses. You paid for it! For example -- the donation to the Boys and Girls clubs. $100 million, they claimed. In fact, it was something like $80 million dollars in software and $20 in cash. So he is out of pocket only $20 million, but he gets a writeoff of the FULL RETAIL VALUE of the software! In other words, if he's writing the "$100 million" off at 50% deduction (1985 it was 50%, in 1986 it was 100%), then he just made $30 million off the backs of joe taxpayer. That's YOUR money he's "donating." We should all gather around him and say "Thank you sir, may I have another?!?" The worst part is that people actually think that he's giving significantly to charity. According to Salon, he gave $600 million since 1994. That's right, that was his first charitable donation. 1994. That's not even $80 million a year if you add it up on a company which will soon have a thousand times that much in the bank. How many years was he a BILLIONAIRE before he gave his FIRST charitable donation? If we had any sense, we'd be running this guy off the plan for our new "never return" Mars mission. Yes, he's very clever. Yes he's managed to use every single rule, and break many, to his advantage. But the idea that anyone would honor this criminal astonishes me.
1) Stop violating the law and pay restitution to each and every company that has been damaged and run out of business by Microsoft's immoral business practices.
2) Rescind the patent for the "long file name."
3) Have Bill Gates and the current management team resign from the company.
4) Drop your prices for your Office suite and OS to zero dollars and zero cents (plus or minus zero) to make it competitive.
5) Do not release your code until it's done, so security can be improved (like some open source projects are able to do).
6) Remove the requirements enter authentication codes and product keys. (Many open source products don't require this.)
7) Use open protocols and stop trying to sabotage everything to make a buck.
8) Try and improve your dismal reputation for shoddy work.
9) When making a charitable contribution cease donating "in-kind" the value of software given just so you can fleece the taxpayers of the tax deduction.
10) God forbid, pay some federal income tax you dirtbags.
11) In short, there is nothing you can do. Have a nice day.
The key to understanding is that the DNS information that is supplied by the tracker (the torrent server) will be cached all around the world thus eliminating the endless amount of tracker server overload that we all see.
For the previous hundred flamers: the actual file is not being handled by DNS, only the tracking information which is tiny. So please, relax.
Now, can someone please figure out a way to create a real-time streaming bittorrent? I would like to see tv stations via streaming realtime bittorrent. Can someone start a bounty on this?
I have now become the "stupid manager" of my small but growing business and I've realized that I just have to remember what my stupid bosses did over the years, and don't do what they did. Sounds easy, but it isn't. I just saw OfficeSpace again. I saw a little of myself. I was afraid.
Bosses like improvements. Radical change. Go faster, go faster. They tend to like this because that's how they got where they are -- right or wrong they tend to have hard driving personalities. Employees don't like constant change, in my opinion. No one likes coming to work and finding a new policy on their desk about their TPS report cover sheets. Change is useless much of the time.
I call this "overbehaviour." Doing something -- anything -- because it... just needs to be improved! Most improvements aren't.
So now that I'm the boss I'm trying to change as little as possible. Try and keep things in a rhythm and ask people to help come up with ideas. Not for internal processes, but for products. And then, give control of that idea to the guy who came up with it. It's his baby, let him nurture it. Let him take credit for it. People tend to live up or down to your expectations.
Use this to make the customer happier.
Ultimately, that's all that matters.
The idea is somewhat linear, just applying software on a large scale to an area which has never had it before, but the execution is vastly more difficult.
Through luck and creativity, it appears that I've found various ways to execute this. Two and a half years to build one part of the software, another couple of years of building and testing, two years of working for "the man" to pay off my debts run up during the first four years.
Now I've got this fairly decent product which I've just started to roll out to some large customers. And I've had many people sign NDA's along the way. If they are violated, would I have the money to pursue the violators? No, of course not. So that makes them worthless, right?
No, they're not, because people don't know that I don't have the money to fight. So NDA's are just a harmless bluff for me and probably everyone else. But in the interests of thoroughness I should use them.
Yes they're useless. Yes you should use them. Not everything has to be useful to be used.
1836 -- The Patent Act of July 4, 1836 reestablished the examination system of 1790. Models were once again required by the Commissioner. "The model, not more than 12 inches square, should be neatly made, the name of the inventor should be printed or engraved upon, or affixed to it, in a durable manner."
It was left to the commissioner of patents on whether or not he wanted to request a model. This case absolutely screams to the model requirement. In my opinion, for technology patents certainly, a person should not be able to patent something that they have no model for.
Microsoft is probably the least able to produce this product. Translation software? Show us that you have this technology. (Yeah right.) You want to translate on the fly on text filled with abbreviations and slang?
Okay, show us that you can do this. Show us your model (AND make it no more than 12 inches square!). Given their record breaking incompetence, there is no way in God's green acres that Microsoft has this technology workable or will have it in the near future.
Maybe a commissioner of patents write in campaign would fix all of these software problems up?
This article nicely summed up a talking point:
"Did you know that Open Office can convert word files to PDF for free?" is a great one.
Another would be:
"Did you know that that program Mozilla gets rid of pop up ads?", or;
"Did you know that Google, the largest search engine, uses that open source Linux?"
The more these are posted and said, the more managers and decision makers will notice. They are simple and memorable (and as Microsoft has noticed, they don't even have to be true.) For good fun, use Microsoft's techniques against them.
Would someone be so kind as to compare the files and locate a duplicate section of about 80 lines? This way we can begin to locate who added the source. The best defence is a good offence, after all.
Imagine that we pull out the 80 lines in the next few days (infringement or not) and replace them and send them off to the distros. The case is closed right there.
Plus, we can publish the lines, show the world that SCO is either lying or donated the code themselves, and shut down this smear campaign before it even starts.
Shall we?