I was laughing my ass off when I read the complaints sent to him about no Amiga, the problem was that no one else used it other than the few "in the know", we emulated the Mac, why buy one, I also had that pc emulator thingy too:-)
I still run into ex-fanatics and it's a strange sort of instant bond, especially if they hung in there and got AmiTCP running at the end of it's existance, that knowledge got me into Linux/BSD.
It's an option I give them, it really is less work for the seller, most everything I buy already has a box sufficient for UPS and noone has yet refused a prepaid sticker.
Yes it is my account, yes I would take someone else's sticker to avoid a typo and misship. Bubble wrap is hardly worth huge sums of cash, and they should be snatching a box from the attic, if you do shipping they should be reused until they completely fall apart, trees and such.
I'm not trying to scam people, but so many people scam with S&H I solved my own problem and I can track and next day it too:-)
I hope that it's an isolated thing, that not all of ATT is bad, but they screwed me in every division they had.
In reply to the other post, well my parents are typically the ones who wouldn't switch even if they are being screwed, they have jumped ship on ATT as well.
Another example of a company smoking crack is Sears, everyone I know has canceled their account and cut their card up.
It shows, the Sears of the 80's and the Sears of now are two very different stores.
Heh, I thought Sears could be one of the first successes of the Internet as they at one time had a huge catalog, stores all over and even doorstep delivery.
They had a good rep, then royally screwed it by systematiclly pissing everyone off.
I don't know about that, my pocket change goes in one of those huge coffee cans, when I fill it up and drop it at the bank for $200 in silver it stops being pocket change. Likewise, when they fill their coffee can up it stops being pocket change.
My ebay tactic is to send a preprinted ups ticket to the seller with a postal money order for the amount won during the auction. Stick the label on and call UPS. This cuts on average $10.00 from the price.
Mail fraud is a huge deterrent to screwing me, since the transaction was completed via US mail. Pick on someone who used paypal.....
I'll give you an example of how this thinking is flawed.
In 2000 ATT was my local cable service, I wanted pay channels and a remote control.
They quoted me a price, which was no where close to what I actually paid.
Normal Sales Tax, I calculate this into everything already, I expect it, roads, schools and such.
Additional charge for the remote controls, the installer said they're extra, huh?
County franchise tax, which has something to do with the fact their cable is strung through the county.
City Franchise tax, same as above, but for the wire strewn through the city.
Sales tax was calculated after these taxes, the bill was over $50.00 greater than the quoted rate. I argued with ATT to at least calculate the sales tax corretly, they essentially told me to F$%@ off.
So I did, I canceled cable, went to circuit city, bought a directv system, installed it myself and later that day had crystal clear satellite with just sales tax added in.
Then I canceled my long distance with ATT after a phone conversation cost me $1.00 a minute, they said I'm not on a plan, so I asked about one, they said I had to pay additional fees every month to be on one, I told them to F#$% off this time, canceled long distance service entirely on the landline, the cellphone has nationwide anyhow.
After sometime I saw a deal with ATT cellular online, it looked better than everything else out at the time, and my current cingular contract was up. I signed up online, the phone was shipped quickly, no hassels, until several months later.....
They apparently decided I didn't need the free bonus minutes, or the nights and weekends like I signed up with, I got a $490 cellphone bill, I lost the paperwork I signed up with, they did back credit for that month, but how many other months did they screw me on and how many people actually sit down with the calculator to tally all their minutes?
ATT has forever lost my business, this includes comcast, no matter the marketing spin, no matter the offer, they will never again be someone I pay cash to.
Oh and nearly everyone I know has kicked them to the curb as well.
We have never, in the history of the United States, allowed a citizen to vote for the President, the populous only voices their opinion.
The elctoral college for better or worse is the body responsible for electing the president, while many states have laws deigning that their representitives must vote with the popular vote, many do not.
The election went fine, it didn't turn out the way you wanted, too bad, the election before Bush didn't turn out the way I wanted, didn't cry, just moved on.
Anything to keep the man out of office whose wife banned 2Live Crew albums for sale down here, and arrested people for selling them.
Art is free speech, your dislike of it does not give you the right to censor it, bible bangers, they're all alike, trust none of them, your party or not.
The statements you have just made are.....flawed from a lack of perspective.
If you think one side or the other is shortsighted you need glasses, you see this is a representitive republic, which means we end up with the most mediocre solution that is still partially functioning, sometimes not at all.
The people in office are elcted by YOU, both sides cater to special interests for campaign funds so you can elect them, both sides make laws and approve funding to those special interests so they get more campaign funding so YOU see them and elect them. The situation is similar to spam, except more people buy partisan bullshit than spam products.
If you would like them to stop, forbid them from any advertisement at all, only allow debates and baby kissing.
Both sides suck, I prefer to elect those who occupy the lowest ivory tower.
This is interesting and all, but maybe we shoule note we found this, take a photo every hundred years and in a million we'll have this cool movie of disk accretion in action, until then let's continue to search for the little green men, and occasionally announce we may have found them so the paranoid leap from windows
At some of the slower times between clients, I've trained my dog all sorts of useless commands for fun. One example he now knows the word kitty and runs full speed across the yard looking for the kitties, no he doesn't want to eat them, just play, not sure what the kitties think of him tho.
Dogs at least give the appearance they're intently listening to you, explaining problems to them can sometimes unjog your mind when it gets stuck on a problem. Haven't had him talk other than bark tho, YMMV
I do go out during the day to see clients, usually in the afternoon, in the morning on those days I do work from home, most days however I attempt to tote the b/w laptop somewhere with wifi access and ssh to my remote box, when I hit a milestone I have a cup of coffee, wander around, *cough* make an ass of myself w/ the women (they know me), and have a little fun, make some friends, you'd be surprised just how many people toteing laptops do the same thing, I have met people from all walks sitting in coffee shops so as not to be at home.
BTW...the b/w laptop starts tons of conversations, anyone worth their salt can work on a console and get linux on a 50mb harddisk:-)
but I will soon buy a powerbook, OSX looks too cool
Re:Not that it's not true...
on
Who Is An ISP?
·
· Score: 2, Funny
One of my long time theories would be that there would be a MS Linux distro soon.
If this is the case SCO has MicroSoft's arm behind their back.
MicroSoft dare not buy SCO as the whole anti-trust thing go bizerk again, trying to unfairly dominate the market with frivolous lawsuites.
I now don't think the SCO thing benefits anyone, maybe SCO knew this and went into battle to keep MicroSoft off their doorstep for now, and maybe some quick out of court settlements to make the top rich, then the MS buyout, for even more riches, greed, ain't it wonderful.
It's clear MicroSoft has some serious issues with the high profile China and Brazil thing, MicroSoft can use Linux in their own OS, and nothing says it must be the GNU userland....
Although I'm not in the said poll, I have deleted all music from my machine, when I rerip my albums they will more than likely be in ogg or flac, the DMCA has made everyone a criminal, I don't use Kazaa, but the record industry has proven you don't need to even have shared to be a target, their evidence is nothing, they take you to court and sue the living hell out of you.
No more, ever, I don't care about music, the RIAA has made it clear they don't like their own customers, I will not support them by listening to artists who support them and steal away my rights, music just isn't that important.
Their logic was if I download it why would I buy it, I like to support my favorite artists, not anymore, they will never get another dime from me ever. I encourage others to do the same.
I am waiting for this broadcast flag to be implemented, for all those that bought HDTV sets minus HDCP capable interconnects, for those who timeshifted shows on VHS tape to be out of luck, for the average viewer's experience to change so drasticly as to make TV only useful for stuff they always watch live like sports.
As I posted here before the whole P2P thing exploded, when these plans trickle down to Joe Average the effect will be a majorly negative one. Tell the guy who had to work OT that he is not able to watch his show timeshifted, or that he must now pay for it on video on demand.
Most of the stuff cranked out by the networks doesn't warrant a broadcast flag, that's like putting shit in a safe.
Thanks to him I narrowly avoided whacking my head full force against the desk due to the ultra slow serial connection on the TiVo. Always been a Samba fan from way back, but the TiVonet was one clever hack.
Now how can you not believe a computer will be alive if it justifies itself as alive using the very same rationalizations you use. If it pleads for it's own life to it's creator, then the general public.
If you had carefully read my replies, they are sarchastic, do you think I don't believe you are "alive" if I think it's possible for computers to be just as alive.
If you read the link I posted you would also understand that I believe the future of intelligence is in evolved intelligence. FPGAs or the next generation of them as they are the closest thing we have to the brain at the hardware level.
This is not the same thing as writing a sorta AI program to run on one of the top5 supercomputers, these machines, if they have no additional circuitry, will be just as good at doing math as we are.
We will not understand how they work, they will be just as unfixable if something goes wrong with them as a real brain. They will not have the ability to be backed up and saved, they will die a real mortal death. They will witness their own kind dieing, they will contemplate their own existance with the realization that no-one can save them, not even their own creator. This will be reality sooner than you think, analog is the future.
Well, we can talk about this in 10 or 20 years, when the technology of thinking machines are beyond the grasp of most humans.
Um... you realize, of course, that you are making the classic materialist/functionalist assumption, equating "brain" with "mind" or "self" -- as if the sum of a person were nothing more than the collection of self-aware cells located inside the skull.
The cells in the brain are no more self aware than a logic gate. It is the assembelage of such cells in an evolved system that will create real intelligence.
I don't think we will actually understand the brain before we create intelligent machines, I don't believe we will understand those intelligent machines either.
It seems that you are ruling out the human experience of self-awareness; our knowledge of time, our awareness of death, our intese inquisitiveness into our own nature. (I am not saying that other higher mammals might not also experience some of this, by the way. But I certainly know that humans do.) I'd encourage you to look into dualist interactionism and other related schools of thought. Bottom line: The jury is still out as to whether the mind = the brain. Just because you can replicate the data processing abilities of the brain, or even improve on them and speed them up, does not mean that you are creating a personality. A high powered camera lens can do as good a job of capturing light as the human eye, but no one actually claims that a camera lense can "see"...
Uh...ok, self awareness, this seems to be what we have been talking about all along, prove to me you are self aware..... you can't, you will never prove to me you are self aware, for that matter you could be an intelligent computer posting to/..
There is no "mind" in the brain, that is an abstraction reflecting the difficulty in describing it's function in simple terms.
I'm not going to copy the final one, but you are 100% correct, the simplest answer is almost always the correct one. Which one sounds more simple.
The mind is not inside the brain, but on another plain of reality with lots of magic thrown in to make it sound special, make us special and destinct from everything else, make us God's most supreme creation, because he told us this in a book hand copied for millenia..........or...
The brain is composed of neurons arranged in a self organizing structure with chemical modifiers. The structure has evolved from lower mammals and as present in humans is just complex enough to allow our survival despite the fact we lack fangs, claws, speed, acute vision and smell. We have survived through thinking, altering the environment to favor our survival. All this has been accomplished with an evolved analog computer with specialized functions as well as a portion for general purpose use that can be devoted to pondering......why?
Slashdot Mirror
I was laughing my ass off when I read the complaints sent to him about no Amiga, the problem was that no one else used it other than the few "in the know", we emulated the Mac, why buy one, I also had that pc emulator thingy too :-)
I still run into ex-fanatics and it's a strange sort of instant bond, especially if they hung in there and got AmiTCP running at the end of it's existance, that knowledge got me into Linux/BSD.
Give me a datatypes drawer!
It's an option I give them, it really is less work for the seller, most everything I buy already has a box sufficient for UPS and noone has yet refused a prepaid sticker.
:-)
Yes it is my account, yes I would take someone else's sticker to avoid a typo and misship. Bubble wrap is hardly worth huge sums of cash, and they should be snatching a box from the attic, if you do shipping they should be reused until they completely fall apart, trees and such.
I'm not trying to scam people, but so many people scam with S&H I solved my own problem and I can track and next day it too
Mods, go to the site referenced before modding me a troll, pick and object and play the game, did you bother to make an account?
My post concours with the above posters thought on the subject.
I hope that it's an isolated thing, that not all of ATT is bad, but they screwed me in every division they had.
In reply to the other post, well my parents are typically the ones who wouldn't switch even if they are being screwed, they have jumped ship on ATT as well.
Another example of a company smoking crack is Sears, everyone I know has canceled their account and cut their card up.
It shows, the Sears of the 80's and the Sears of now are two very different stores.
Heh, I thought Sears could be one of the first successes of the Internet as they at one time had a huge catalog, stores all over and even doorstep delivery.
They had a good rep, then royally screwed it by systematiclly pissing everyone off.
I don't know about that, my pocket change goes in one of those huge coffee cans, when I fill it up and drop it at the bank for $200 in silver it stops being pocket change. Likewise, when they fill their coffee can up it stops being pocket change.
My ebay tactic is to send a preprinted ups ticket to the seller with a postal money order for the amount won during the auction. Stick the label on and call UPS. This cuts on average $10.00 from the price.
Mail fraud is a huge deterrent to screwing me, since the transaction was completed via US mail. Pick on someone who used paypal.....
Oh shit, you talked to a lawyer about it, you'll have to keep that package for the rest of your life to save anything now.
I'll give you an example of how this thinking is flawed.
In 2000 ATT was my local cable service, I wanted pay channels and a remote control.
They quoted me a price, which was no where close to what I actually paid.
Normal Sales Tax, I calculate this into everything already, I expect it, roads, schools and such.
Additional charge for the remote controls, the installer said they're extra, huh?
County franchise tax, which has something to do with the fact their cable is strung through the county.
City Franchise tax, same as above, but for the wire strewn through the city.
Sales tax was calculated after these taxes, the bill was over $50.00 greater than the quoted rate. I argued with ATT to at least calculate the sales tax corretly, they essentially told me to F$%@ off.
So I did, I canceled cable, went to circuit city, bought a directv system, installed it myself and later that day had crystal clear satellite with just sales tax added in.
Then I canceled my long distance with ATT after a phone conversation cost me $1.00 a minute, they said I'm not on a plan, so I asked about one, they said I had to pay additional fees every month to be on one, I told them to F#$% off this time, canceled long distance service entirely on the landline, the cellphone has nationwide anyhow.
After sometime I saw a deal with ATT cellular online, it looked better than everything else out at the time, and my current cingular contract was up. I signed up online, the phone was shipped quickly, no hassels, until several months later.....
They apparently decided I didn't need the free bonus minutes, or the nights and weekends like I signed up with, I got a $490 cellphone bill, I lost the paperwork I signed up with, they did back credit for that month, but how many other months did they screw me on and how many people actually sit down with the calculator to tally all their minutes?
ATT has forever lost my business, this includes comcast, no matter the marketing spin, no matter the offer, they will never again be someone I pay cash to.
Oh and nearly everyone I know has kicked them to the curb as well.
But could it understand bablefish translations.
People must smoke crack before filling the questions out, it need common sense, but there's nothing common about it.
Or so you think......
We have never, in the history of the United States, allowed a citizen to vote for the President, the populous only voices their opinion.
The elctoral college for better or worse is the body responsible for electing the president,
while many states have laws deigning that their representitives must vote with the popular vote, many do not.
The election went fine, it didn't turn out the way you wanted, too bad, the election before Bush didn't turn out the way I wanted, didn't cry, just moved on.
Anything to keep the man out of office whose wife banned 2Live Crew albums for sale down here, and arrested people for selling them.
Art is free speech, your dislike of it does not give you the right to censor it, bible bangers, they're all alike, trust none of them, your party or not.
I see them for what they are elected con-men
You are correct, don't be fooled......
The statements you have just made are.....flawed from a lack of perspective.
If you think one side or the other is shortsighted you need glasses, you see this is a representitive republic, which means we end up with the most mediocre solution that is still partially functioning, sometimes not at all.
The people in office are elcted by YOU, both sides cater to special interests for campaign funds so you can elect them, both sides make laws and approve funding to those special interests so they get more campaign funding so YOU see them and elect them. The situation is similar to spam, except more people buy partisan bullshit than spam products.
If you would like them to stop, forbid them from any advertisement at all, only allow debates and baby kissing.
Both sides suck, I prefer to elect those who occupy the lowest ivory tower.
I did actually get a cuecat, but I lost the mail in rebate for the karma points.
Where is the slashdot credit card with karma points for every purchase.
I paid cash for the following, but don't think I wouldn't have used the slashdot card so I could troll more often.
First it was the netpliance
Then the apex dvd player that plays mp3s
then the tivo and tivonet
now it's a box to display hdtv stuff without a computer
cool, but I think this has more in common with the netpliance than with the other three which are still used.
For its price I would expect more, like something to read straight from a dvd, harddrive or something, no wait that would be useful.
This is interesting and all, but maybe we shoule note we found this,
take a photo every hundred years and in a million we'll have this cool movie of disk accretion in action,
until then let's continue to search for the little green men, and occasionally announce we may have found them so the paranoid leap from windows
At some of the slower times between clients, I've trained my dog all sorts of useless commands for fun.
One example he now knows the word kitty and runs full speed across the yard looking for the kitties, no he doesn't want to eat them, just play, not sure what the kitties think of him tho.
Dogs at least give the appearance they're intently listening to you, explaining problems to them can sometimes unjog your mind when it gets stuck on a problem. Haven't had him talk other than bark tho, YMMV
I'm serious about this, no joking.
:-)
I do go out during the day to see clients, usually in the afternoon, in the morning on those days I do work from home, most days however I attempt to tote the b/w laptop somewhere with wifi access and ssh to my remote box, when I hit a milestone I have a cup of coffee, wander around, *cough* make an ass of myself w/ the women (they know me), and have a little fun, make some friends, you'd be surprised just how many people toteing laptops do the same thing, I have met people from all walks sitting in coffee shops so as not to be at home.
BTW...the b/w laptop starts tons of conversations, anyone worth their salt can work on a console and get linux on a 50mb harddisk
but I will soon buy a powerbook, OSX looks too cool
No, saying it over and over does.....
I didn't know this.
One of my long time theories would be that there would be a MS Linux distro soon.
If this is the case SCO has MicroSoft's arm behind their back.
MicroSoft dare not buy SCO as the whole anti-trust thing go bizerk again, trying to unfairly dominate the market with frivolous lawsuites.
I now don't think the SCO thing benefits anyone,
maybe SCO knew this and went into battle to keep MicroSoft off their doorstep for now,
and maybe some quick out of court settlements to make the top rich,
then the MS buyout, for even more riches,
greed, ain't it wonderful.
It's clear MicroSoft has some serious issues with the high profile China and Brazil thing,
MicroSoft can use Linux in their own OS, and nothing says it must be the GNU userland....
Although I'm not in the said poll, I have deleted all music from my machine, when I rerip my albums they will more than likely be in ogg or flac, the DMCA has made everyone a criminal, I don't use Kazaa, but the record industry has proven you don't need to even have shared to be a target, their evidence is nothing, they take you to court and sue the living hell out of you.
No more, ever, I don't care about music, the RIAA has made it clear they don't like their own customers, I will not support them by listening to artists who support them and steal away my rights, music just isn't that important.
Their logic was if I download it why would I buy it, I like to support my favorite artists, not anymore, they will never get another dime from me ever. I encourage others to do the same.
It has nothing to do with the safety of the Astronauts, but of the brass, as all of the world watches a flaming orbiter fall to the earth.
I am waiting for this broadcast flag to be implemented,
for all those that bought HDTV sets minus HDCP capable interconnects,
for those who timeshifted shows on VHS tape to be out of luck,
for the average viewer's experience to change so drasticly as to make TV only useful for stuff they always watch live like sports.
As I posted here before the whole P2P thing exploded,
when these plans trickle down to Joe Average the effect will be a majorly negative one.
Tell the guy who had to work OT that he is not able to watch his show timeshifted,
or that he must now pay for it on video on demand.
Most of the stuff cranked out by the networks doesn't warrant a broadcast flag,
that's like putting shit in a safe.
Thanks to him I narrowly avoided whacking my head full force against the desk due to the ultra slow serial connection on the TiVo.
Always been a Samba fan from way back, but the TiVonet was one clever hack.
Excellent, I'm glad you bit on what I posted.
Now how can you not believe a computer will be alive if it justifies itself as alive using the very same rationalizations you use. If it pleads for it's own life to it's creator, then the general public.
If you had carefully read my replies, they are sarchastic, do you think I don't believe you are "alive" if I think it's possible for computers to be just as alive.
If you read the link I posted you would also understand that I believe the future of intelligence is in evolved intelligence. FPGAs or the next generation of them as they are the closest thing we have to the brain at the hardware level.
This is not the same thing as writing a sorta AI program to run on one of the top5 supercomputers, these machines, if they have no additional circuitry, will be just as good at doing math as we are.
We will not understand how they work, they will be just as unfixable if something goes wrong with them as a real brain. They will not have the ability to be backed up and saved, they will die a real mortal death. They will witness their own kind dieing, they will contemplate their own existance with the realization that no-one can save them, not even their own creator. This will be reality sooner than you think, analog is the future.
Well, we can talk about this in 10 or 20 years, when the technology of thinking machines are beyond the grasp of most humans.
/. .
...or...
Um... you realize, of course, that you are making the classic materialist/functionalist assumption, equating "brain" with "mind" or "self" -- as if the sum of a person were nothing more than the collection of self-aware cells located inside the skull.
The cells in the brain are no more self aware than a logic gate. It is the assembelage of such cells in an evolved system that will create real intelligence.
I don't think we will actually understand the brain before we create intelligent machines, I don't believe we will understand those intelligent machines either.
It seems that you are ruling out the human experience of self-awareness; our knowledge of time, our awareness of death, our intese inquisitiveness into our own nature. (I am not saying that other higher mammals might not also experience some of this, by the way. But I certainly know that humans do.) I'd encourage you to look into dualist interactionism and other related schools of thought. Bottom line: The jury is still out as to whether the mind = the brain. Just because you can replicate the data processing abilities of the brain, or even improve on them and speed them up, does not mean that you are creating a personality. A high powered camera lens can do as good a job of capturing light as the human eye, but no one actually claims that a camera lense can "see"...
Uh...ok, self awareness, this seems to be what we have been talking about all along, prove to me you are self aware..... you can't, you will never prove to me you are self aware, for that matter you could be an intelligent computer posting to
There is no "mind" in the brain, that is an abstraction reflecting the difficulty in describing it's function in simple terms.
I'm not going to copy the final one, but you are 100% correct, the simplest answer is almost always the correct one. Which one sounds more simple.
The mind is not inside the brain, but on another plain of reality with lots of magic thrown in to make it sound special, make us special and destinct from everything else, make us God's most supreme creation, because he told us this in a book hand copied for millenia.......
The brain is composed of neurons arranged in a self organizing structure with chemical modifiers. The structure has evolved from lower mammals and as present in humans is just complex enough to allow our survival despite the fact we lack fangs, claws, speed, acute vision and smell. We have survived through thinking, altering the environment to favor our survival. All this has been accomplished with an evolved analog computer with specialized functions as well as a portion for general purpose use that can be devoted to pondering......why?