This Agreement does not grant a right to receive any distribution of software from SCO or any other third party.
Yeah, about that.
Is it just me, or does this whole license pretty much leave you up the creek? I suppose it can be argued that you are paying for a license for computers already running linux, but what if you want to do something like, say, upgrade your distribution? What if you're switching from another OS? What if you get a new computer that's incompatible with the distribution you have on hand? Was this even thought through before they posted it?
This whole thing makes my brain hurt.
So, the good news for him is so far that the FBI's just fishing on his machines right now. If they find what they're looking for, or anything else very illegal to have, then they'll be back with the cuffs.
From my understanding of how the Constitution works, the "or anything else very illegal" shouldn't be in there. If they had knocked on this guy's door serving the warrant, and they found a bag of weed on his coffee table, they couldn't do anything about it. The guy would hopefully have the humility and common sense to dispose/hide it once he realised that the Feds were in his house, and the Feds --might-- have some power to dispose of it, but he couldn't be charged with anything related to the pot.
Now, in searching of this guy's hard drive, if they had found nothing relevant to the investigation, but did find instructions on how to build a meth lab, 2 GB of kiddie porn, and a copy of the source to Windows, they couldn't do anything because it's not what the warrant allows them to search for.
It comes from the fifth amendment (I'm pretty sure... don't feel like looking it up right now...)
From my understanding of what's going on, this guy will get his computers back "soon" (a couple of months) unless a) he's actually guilty of something, or b) the actual guity party used his computer as some sort of intermediary device.
Even from the guy's own account, the agents seemed to have been polite and operating within every limit of the law. His complaints of having to be monitored every minute while the search was happening seems completely logical to me, as it is important to make sure that he's not off destroying what they are looking for.
That really sounds like what I have to do to boot linux on my mac. It's not that much of a pain in the ass, unless of course you have to do the whole "reformat after filling 80 GB" thing.
From the way I understood what this was trying to accomplish, it seems that openfirmware has a couple of years jump on them.
Perhaps it's just a difference between you and me, but I find that making specific partitions on a cleanly formatted drive not so much of a pain in the ass, considering that I have to wipe the drive to begin with.
Let me sober up and I'll argue with you some more.
Damn. I really need to stop posting and sending emails when I'm drunk. Causes nothing but trouble.
Didn't see the words "out of the remaining".
Sorry for having my asshat on.:p
Isn't this a little dangerous? I mean, putting all that light out there, couldn't an airplane mistake his house for a runway?
And who pays this guy's electricity bill?
So what if I'm jealous. Let me be bitter.:)
Re:Perl may be old but it's new to me
on
Perl is Sweet Sixteen
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I think it all depends on what setting the new programmer is learning.
In an academic setting, there is a lot more room for teaching abstract concepts and giving a more thorough explanation than might be available in a self-taught environment. Also, there is a basis behind computer science that is completely language independent and requires a fundamental understanding of key concepts that might be best learned by writing 30 lines of C code for something that is implemented in perl using two lines. Things like linear linked lists and pointers come to mind.
I learned perl outside of an academic setting and thought I had a fairly good grasp of what was going on. Some of the things that myself or coworkers (mostly the coworkers) implemented using perl blow my mind to this day. But my understanding of programming concepts was way off. Things like good algorithm design, memory management, data abstraction, etc., were all essentially foreign concepts to me.
I've ranted long enough. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that people can learn as many languages as they want on their own, but unless they understand how and when to do things a certain way and why, their code is quite possibly no better than a "noble effort".
I'm not trying to troll here. I've just started realising over the past couple of weeks how important formal CS training is to good programming skills. Maybe psuedo-code is the way to go?
I suspect that it has a lot to do with the fact that the people that the RIAA is going after for providing the files to be downloaded might have some basis in the easiness of finding a server rather than someone connected to it. Remember that it's usually a lot easier to connect to someone's server and see what they are providing for download rather than keep tabs on a computer and follow it from server to server and watch what it downloads. They do go after downloaders, but not as often. Also, don't forget that most of the mp3's that you see on a server were probably downloaded off of a third party's server (who probably got them from somewhere else, etc.) -- so in some respect they are going after the downloader...
There's no reason to let a law written by the RIAA and other old industry interests suppress new technologies like Napster.
As far as i can tell, the record companies don't seem to have a problem (at least not as large of one) with napster since they've relaunched and are no longer a free-for-all of downloadable stuff. I think the problem is with things like old napster and the fact that it was, as much as I hate to say this, akin to stealing.
However, compensation can be given without control, and that's what's been done in the past as in the case of cable TV. The cable TV had to pay a license fee, but the old broadcasters could not restrict the cable TV companies from licensing any TV program they wanted. That's the solution that should've been applied to Napster. It grants both parties a reasonable settlement and allows people to continue to innovate.
Yeah, that sounds great. It works on paper. But how many kids, let's put them in the 12-17 age range for sake of argument, do you think are going to take the time to get their parents to let them sit there and download music using their credit card or are just going to go out and download for free using the latest hotline/gnutella/napster/edonkey/whatevers-hot-at- the-moment? I don't think the record companies are actually stifling any innovation. >ducks< I just think that they don't want people distributing their crap for free. Unfortunately, whenever a new p2p client or stuff of that ilk pops up, it seems to be instantly flooded with stuff that shouldn't be there. BitTorrent has a bunch of good stuff on it, like all those linux distros and little documentaries that people put together. Why hasn't anyone gone after them? They don't need to.
>sigh<
I've got to go to bed. I'll rant more in the morning -- I promise!:)
Why should it scare the piss out of you?
The man isn't quite ready to retire, but he's probably tired of being at the ATF. So these people hire him.
I'm pretty sure he's not going to be able to form squads of gun-toting "enforcers" to go around and search for pirated music.
While I don't necessarily agree with their tactics (%99 of their lawsuits have been pretty bunk), they do make a valid point: copying this stuff willy-nilly without regard to the copyright is illegal. Just because you bought one CD doesn't mean that you can give copies away to everyone you know, nor does it automagically grant you the right to copy all the CDs of your friends.
Now, if you're only downloading music by indie bands or that has been specifically put up for legal download (itunes comes to mind), what do you have to worry about?
If you're going to turn around and tell me that it's your right to download all the music you want and that the copyrights placed on the music is null and void, then I'd have to respectfully disagree with you.
I'm really not trying to troll here. I'm just failing to see why this should be a cause for alarm.
You ever notice how the companies that produce crappy products and survive are the ones who play dirty?
Unfortunately, the creative sorts who have fairly robust morals and ethics tend not to survive too often in today's business world. How many companies with crappy products can you name that have succeded primarily because they've flexed their muscles? I can name five in under 15 seconds, and I'm tired.
Unfortunately, "normal" business practise now seems to include fighting dirty, and it's usually at the expense of the final product. As much as I know people would hate to hear it, every big company does it. Look at Apple, Microsoft, IBM, SCO... Yes, some of them have released quality products, but none of them would really be where they are today without a little bullying. Apple used to be extremely litigious, IBM has done more than their share of strong arming, and I'm pretty sure that you can fill in the blanks for SCO and Microsoft.
But some of the "favorite" companies fight just as dirty. Perhaps a company should be expected to be able to heft its weight around in order to gain a respectable place in the market. It's not something that I necessarily agree with, but it seems like you can't really survive with out it.
There's my rant for the evening. I've officially been pointed me down the road towards depression thinking about this.:(
-mo
Pretend for just a moment that we were talking about cars.
Now, let's take a BMW sedan that sells for what, about $35,000? Compare it to, say, a Kia sedan that sells for about $20,000.
They're both cars, and yet one costs $15,000 more than the other one... And I'm pretty sure that both of them have quite large restrictions on when their dealers can discount certain items.
But why? Both have engines that make you go forward and reverse, steering, etc.. But one's a luxury model. Leather seats, nifty spiffy in-dash computer, all that kind of good stuff. Do you need it? Probably not. Is it something that could make your drive a little more pleasant? Yeah, maybe.
Now, let's look at the iPod. Do you need the nifty Apple-style design, the metalic casing, the laser engraving, etc.? No. Are they fun/nice to have? Yeah, if you're a person who enjoys things like good design. But, the same way with the car, it's not for everybody. These are also usually features that cost extra. But I can guarantee you that apple isn't the only one dictating prices on their mp3 players.
From the announcement: According to the guidelines set by our legal department, we cannot release
the full product, so we have built a set of diff source files and
associated documentation.
I'm kinda confused by this one... Why couldn't they release the full source code? Is there anything stopping somebody from distributing the source after applying the diffs?
-mo
Re:What will drive Linux adoption
on
Linux in 2004?
·
· Score: 1
I've never seen the Helix Player. I'd given up on running real under linux a while ago. By looking at the build instructions it seems that it might even work on my computer (you see, I'm running linux on a powermac...). I'll have to give it a go, thanks for pointing it out.:)
But don't forget about the "moms" out there who won't want to take the time to learn how to seek software like this. Perhaps a simple distribution (there might be onw) where there are fewer things geared towards the techie, like DDD, apache, mysql, etc., and more things like media players and "home applications" -- is this whaat lindows is/was trying to do? -- because, after all, I have a really hard time seeing anyone in my family launching a debugger, let alone taking the time to customise their installation.
Random ranting, feel free to ignore me.:)
Re:What will drive Linux adoption
on
Linux in 2004?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Taking your comment one step further...
Multimedia might also be another roadblock. And by multimedia I am including games and the like. Joe just wants to use the computer, and most likely his computer usage consists of about %90 games and web browsing. Two good examples are RealMedia and Flash. I realise that there are solutions to both of these, but the quality is nothing compared to what is available for Mac or Windows.
Also, there are still some hardware issues to work out. Digital cameras, printers, scanners, and others are still not quite where they should be. Yes, some distributions have made some of these simple to set up, but what you and I see as "simple" scares the pants off of the non-techie -- especially when a CLI is involved -- who probably doesn't know that they should configure their XFree86 server to run at x Hz instead of y Hz. The fact that my particular digital camera requires me to download and compile gphoto from cvs to use it under linux pretty much means that no noob would have any luck with this particular camera. Here's another chance to plead with hardware manufacturers for open drivers...
One last issue, and probably the most disturbingly humorous to me, is the public's view on Linux, the BSD's, etc.: I've talked to quite a few people (*cough*myfamily*cough*) who have honestly believed that the open os's were "illegal" tools meant to be used by "hackers" to "hack into" your "network." This here is something that could be solved simply with a little more advertising and the like, but advertising in mainstream channels costs money, and I'm pretty sure that the FSF isn't ready to shell out for a public awareness campaign to let people know that this stuff isn't just for the hardcore techie (well, mostly... see above)
The good thing is is that these are all fixable and known problems, so hopefully they'll change soon.
There's always the chance of a type 2 error - you could lose (either through accidental blocking or unintetional deleteing) an important email.
Yeah, no kidding.
I've gone throught this. This guy tried to send me an email. Pretty important stuff. I ran into him two weeks later and he asked why I hadn't replied to his email. I told him I never received it, so we both just figured he sent it to the wrong address (why he didn't get a bounce though...) This guy was using something like yahoo or hotmail for his email.
About two weeks later, my sister, who up until then had been sending me email just fine through her hotmail account, tried to forward me the itinerary for a plane ticket she had just booked me using a different account. After a week of trying, I had her send it to a different account. Worked fine.
Turned out that my ISP had some crazy spam filtering on. Just for fun, I had them turn it off for my account. Seems as if the first guy's account was getting blocked by the filter (crazy username + hotmail is a pretty good sign of spam), but I can't figure out why my sister's.gov address was being blocked.
About a month went by and I still hadn't received any spam. Now I'm getting about two pieces a day, and I still haven't given that address out to any forms or nuthin'. If I ignore it or click on the "remove my name" link, it'll only get worse, but if I have them turn the filters back on, I'll miss some emails that I'd really rather not, and I don't want to have to tell my ISP every time when an email address is legitimate.
<sigh>
Seems like it's just an uphill battle. Perhaps it's time to buy off the senate -- I mean, "lobby"?
Many retailers are already complaining that they were unable to order sufficient quantities to supply them if the bug takes more than a few days to fix.
Nice choice of words...
But all joking aside, isn't there some sort of fallback system so that at least partial distribution comes to mind? Pen and paper is just the first one to come to mind, after all, there had to be some human element in the wharehouse (unless they had robots pulling all the liquor, which would just be cool).
Had this been something more important, say the postal service, a hospital, or even a fast food chain, what would the fallback have been?
I have the feeling that these are those overly protective parents that make their kids wear tons of safety gear while engaging in extremely hazardous activities, such as walking.
We could ban tons of stuff from schools because it's 'dangerous'... Considering what people are exposed to every day, I'm suprised they went after this. While I can appreciate the whole be a good parent, look after kid's safety bit; I really don't recall anyone proving, substantially, that wi-fi poses any sort of safety risk. One can argue also that television and radio waves can also cause cancer/epilepsy/satan-worship/etc., so why not go after those too?
Slashdot Mirror
This Agreement does not grant a right to receive any distribution of software from SCO or any other third party.
Yeah, about that.
Is it just me, or does this whole license pretty much leave you up the creek? I suppose it can be argued that you are paying for a license for computers already running linux, but what if you want to do something like, say, upgrade your distribution? What if you're switching from another OS? What if you get a new computer that's incompatible with the distribution you have on hand? Was this even thought through before they posted it?
This whole thing makes my brain hurt.
precious in an industry where many young buyers have to take the time to squirrel away $50 for a typical purchase.
See, this wouldn't be a problem if they were just taking the money out of their mother's purses like they're supposed to.
It's well known that Michael Jackson uses a 10 year old laptop...
<grin>
So, the good news for him is so far that the FBI's just fishing on his machines right now. If they find what they're looking for, or anything else very illegal to have, then they'll be back with the cuffs.
From my understanding of how the Constitution works, the "or anything else very illegal" shouldn't be in there. If they had knocked on this guy's door serving the warrant, and they found a bag of weed on his coffee table, they couldn't do anything about it. The guy would hopefully have the humility and common sense to dispose/hide it once he realised that the Feds were in his house, and the Feds --might-- have some power to dispose of it, but he couldn't be charged with anything related to the pot.
Now, in searching of this guy's hard drive, if they had found nothing relevant to the investigation, but did find instructions on how to build a meth lab, 2 GB of kiddie porn, and a copy of the source to Windows, they couldn't do anything because it's not what the warrant allows them to search for.
It comes from the fifth amendment (I'm pretty sure... don't feel like looking it up right now...)
From my understanding of what's going on, this guy will get his computers back "soon" (a couple of months) unless a) he's actually guilty of something, or b) the actual guity party used his computer as some sort of intermediary device.
Even from the guy's own account, the agents seemed to have been polite and operating within every limit of the law. His complaints of having to be monitored every minute while the search was happening seems completely logical to me, as it is important to make sure that he's not off destroying what they are looking for.
-mo
Perhaps all that is needed is a little kiss and tell?
:)
Sorry, I'm a bad person.
That really sounds like what I have to do to boot linux on my mac. It's not that much of a pain in the ass, unless of course you have to do the whole "reformat after filling 80 GB" thing.
From the way I understood what this was trying to accomplish, it seems that openfirmware has a couple of years jump on them.
Perhaps it's just a difference between you and me, but I find that making specific partitions on a cleanly formatted drive not so much of a pain in the ass, considering that I have to wipe the drive to begin with.
Let me sober up and I'll argue with you some more.
Damn. I really need to stop posting and sending emails when I'm drunk. Causes nothing but trouble. :p
Didn't see the words "out of the remaining".
Sorry for having my asshat on.
I think investors also like it when numbers add up to 100. Right now you're at 100.000002525 %. ;)
Isn't this a little dangerous? I mean, putting all that light out there, couldn't an airplane mistake his house for a runway?
:)
And who pays this guy's electricity bill?
So what if I'm jealous. Let me be bitter.
I think it all depends on what setting the new programmer is learning.
In an academic setting, there is a lot more room for teaching abstract concepts and giving a more thorough explanation than might be available in a self-taught environment. Also, there is a basis behind computer science that is completely language independent and requires a fundamental understanding of key concepts that might be best learned by writing 30 lines of C code for something that is implemented in perl using two lines. Things like linear linked lists and pointers come to mind.
I learned perl outside of an academic setting and thought I had a fairly good grasp of what was going on. Some of the things that myself or coworkers (mostly the coworkers) implemented using perl blow my mind to this day. But my understanding of programming concepts was way off. Things like good algorithm design, memory management, data abstraction, etc., were all essentially foreign concepts to me.
I've ranted long enough. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that people can learn as many languages as they want on their own, but unless they understand how and when to do things a certain way and why, their code is quite possibly no better than a "noble effort".
I'm not trying to troll here. I've just started realising over the past couple of weeks how important formal CS training is to good programming skills. Maybe psuedo-code is the way to go?
My mate convinced my other half there really dangerous
;)
Oh, on the contrary. The bikes themselves are perfectly safe.
It's the sudden and abrasive stop that you come to when performing an "emergency exit" that's the dangerous part.
I suspect that it has a lot to do with the fact that the people that the RIAA is going after for providing the files to be downloaded might have some basis in the easiness of finding a server rather than someone connected to it. Remember that it's usually a lot easier to connect to someone's server and see what they are providing for download rather than keep tabs on a computer and follow it from server to server and watch what it downloads. They do go after downloaders, but not as often. Also, don't forget that most of the mp3's that you see on a server were probably downloaded off of a third party's server (who probably got them from somewhere else, etc.) -- so in some respect they are going after the downloader...
There's no reason to let a law written by the RIAA and other old industry interests suppress new technologies like Napster.
- the-moment? I don't think the record companies are actually stifling any innovation. >ducks< I just think that they don't want people distributing their crap for free. Unfortunately, whenever a new p2p client or stuff of that ilk pops up, it seems to be instantly flooded with stuff that shouldn't be there. BitTorrent has a bunch of good stuff on it, like all those linux distros and little documentaries that people put together. Why hasn't anyone gone after them? They don't need to.
:)
As far as i can tell, the record companies don't seem to have a problem (at least not as large of one) with napster since they've relaunched and are no longer a free-for-all of downloadable stuff. I think the problem is with things like old napster and the fact that it was, as much as I hate to say this, akin to stealing.
However, compensation can be given without control, and that's what's been done in the past as in the case of cable TV. The cable TV had to pay a license fee, but the old broadcasters could not restrict the cable TV companies from licensing any TV program they wanted. That's the solution that should've been applied to Napster. It grants both parties a reasonable settlement and allows people to continue to innovate.
Yeah, that sounds great. It works on paper. But how many kids, let's put them in the 12-17 age range for sake of argument, do you think are going to take the time to get their parents to let them sit there and download music using their credit card or are just going to go out and download for free using the latest hotline/gnutella/napster/edonkey/whatevers-hot-at
>sigh< I've got to go to bed. I'll rant more in the morning -- I promise!
Why should it scare the piss out of you?
The man isn't quite ready to retire, but he's probably tired of being at the ATF. So these people hire him.
I'm pretty sure he's not going to be able to form squads of gun-toting "enforcers" to go around and search for pirated music.
While I don't necessarily agree with their tactics (%99 of their lawsuits have been pretty bunk), they do make a valid point: copying this stuff willy-nilly without regard to the copyright is illegal. Just because you bought one CD doesn't mean that you can give copies away to everyone you know, nor does it automagically grant you the right to copy all the CDs of your friends.
Now, if you're only downloading music by indie bands or that has been specifically put up for legal download (itunes comes to mind), what do you have to worry about?
If you're going to turn around and tell me that it's your right to download all the music you want and that the copyrights placed on the music is null and void, then I'd have to respectfully disagree with you.
I'm really not trying to troll here. I'm just failing to see why this should be a cause for alarm.
You ever notice how the companies that produce crappy products and survive are the ones who play dirty? :(
-mo
Unfortunately, the creative sorts who have fairly robust morals and ethics tend not to survive too often in today's business world. How many companies with crappy products can you name that have succeded primarily because they've flexed their muscles? I can name five in under 15 seconds, and I'm tired.
Unfortunately, "normal" business practise now seems to include fighting dirty, and it's usually at the expense of the final product. As much as I know people would hate to hear it, every big company does it. Look at Apple, Microsoft, IBM, SCO... Yes, some of them have released quality products, but none of them would really be where they are today without a little bullying. Apple used to be extremely litigious, IBM has done more than their share of strong arming, and I'm pretty sure that you can fill in the blanks for SCO and Microsoft.
But some of the "favorite" companies fight just as dirty. Perhaps a company should be expected to be able to heft its weight around in order to gain a respectable place in the market. It's not something that I necessarily agree with, but it seems like you can't really survive with out it.
There's my rant for the evening. I've officially been pointed me down the road towards depression thinking about this.
Pretend for just a moment that we were talking about cars.
Now, let's take a BMW sedan that sells for what, about $35,000? Compare it to, say, a Kia sedan that sells for about $20,000. They're both cars, and yet one costs $15,000 more than the other one... And I'm pretty sure that both of them have quite large restrictions on when their dealers can discount certain items.
But why? Both have engines that make you go forward and reverse, steering, etc.. But one's a luxury model. Leather seats, nifty spiffy in-dash computer, all that kind of good stuff. Do you need it? Probably not. Is it something that could make your drive a little more pleasant? Yeah, maybe.
Now, let's look at the iPod. Do you need the nifty Apple-style design, the metalic casing, the laser engraving, etc.? No. Are they fun/nice to have? Yeah, if you're a person who enjoys things like good design. But, the same way with the car, it's not for everybody. These are also usually features that cost extra. But I can guarantee you that apple isn't the only one dictating prices on their mp3 players.
Yeah, my favorite thing about Alex Chiu is that if you pay him for his immortality device, he offers a 90 day, money back gaurantee.
I've always wondered how one gauges the effectiveness of an immortality device in only 90 days...
From the announcement:
According to the guidelines set by our legal department, we cannot release the full product, so we have built a set of diff source files and associated documentation.
I'm kinda confused by this one... Why couldn't they release the full source code? Is there anything stopping somebody from distributing the source after applying the diffs?
-mo
I've never seen the Helix Player. I'd given up on running real under linux a while ago. By looking at the build instructions it seems that it might even work on my computer (you see, I'm running linux on a powermac...). I'll have to give it a go, thanks for pointing it out. :)
:)
But don't forget about the "moms" out there who won't want to take the time to learn how to seek software like this. Perhaps a simple distribution (there might be onw) where there are fewer things geared towards the techie, like DDD, apache, mysql, etc., and more things like media players and "home applications" -- is this whaat lindows is/was trying to do? -- because, after all, I have a really hard time seeing anyone in my family launching a debugger, let alone taking the time to customise their installation.
Random ranting, feel free to ignore me.
Taking your comment one step further...
Multimedia might also be another roadblock. And by multimedia I am including games and the like. Joe just wants to use the computer, and most likely his computer usage consists of about %90 games and web browsing. Two good examples are RealMedia and Flash. I realise that there are solutions to both of these, but the quality is nothing compared to what is available for Mac or Windows.
Also, there are still some hardware issues to work out. Digital cameras, printers, scanners, and others are still not quite where they should be. Yes, some distributions have made some of these simple to set up, but what you and I see as "simple" scares the pants off of the non-techie -- especially when a CLI is involved -- who probably doesn't know that they should configure their XFree86 server to run at x Hz instead of y Hz. The fact that my particular digital camera requires me to download and compile gphoto from cvs to use it under linux pretty much means that no noob would have any luck with this particular camera. Here's another chance to plead with hardware manufacturers for open drivers...
One last issue, and probably the most disturbingly humorous to me, is the public's view on Linux, the BSD's, etc.: I've talked to quite a few people (*cough*myfamily*cough*) who have honestly believed that the open os's were "illegal" tools meant to be used by "hackers" to "hack into" your "network." This here is something that could be solved simply with a little more advertising and the like, but advertising in mainstream channels costs money, and I'm pretty sure that the FSF isn't ready to shell out for a public awareness campaign to let people know that this stuff isn't just for the hardcore techie (well, mostly... see above)
The good thing is is that these are all fixable and known problems, so hopefully they'll change soon.
Just my two cents worth...
-mo
From the manufacturers page:
the EMBRIO uses a complex series of sensors and gyroscopes to balance one or more human passengers on a single wheel.
Judging by the picture on the same page, I'm really rather curious where the "or more" would fit.
There's always the chance of a type 2 error - you could lose (either through accidental blocking or unintetional deleteing) an important email.
.gov address was being blocked.
Yeah, no kidding.
I've gone throught this. This guy tried to send me an email. Pretty important stuff. I ran into him two weeks later and he asked why I hadn't replied to his email. I told him I never received it, so we both just figured he sent it to the wrong address (why he didn't get a bounce though...) This guy was using something like yahoo or hotmail for his email.
About two weeks later, my sister, who up until then had been sending me email just fine through her hotmail account, tried to forward me the itinerary for a plane ticket she had just booked me using a different account. After a week of trying, I had her send it to a different account. Worked fine.
Turned out that my ISP had some crazy spam filtering on. Just for fun, I had them turn it off for my account. Seems as if the first guy's account was getting blocked by the filter (crazy username + hotmail is a pretty good sign of spam), but I can't figure out why my sister's
About a month went by and I still hadn't received any spam. Now I'm getting about two pieces a day, and I still haven't given that address out to any forms or nuthin'. If I ignore it or click on the "remove my name" link, it'll only get worse, but if I have them turn the filters back on, I'll miss some emails that I'd really rather not, and I don't want to have to tell my ISP every time when an email address is legitimate.
<sigh>
Seems like it's just an uphill battle. Perhaps it's time to buy off the senate -- I mean, "lobby"?
I dunno about the rest of the geeks out there, but I would *much* rather type than write. Typing is faster and more accurate (vs recognition).
No kidding. You ever tried doing any sort of programming or scripting using some sort of pen input device?
Look at some code sometime and imagine writing it out by hand (esp. with things like &, *, {}, etc.)
It hurts me to think about it.
-mo
Many retailers are already complaining that they were unable to order sufficient quantities to supply them if the bug takes more than a few days to fix.
Nice choice of words...
But all joking aside, isn't there some sort of fallback system so that at least partial distribution comes to mind? Pen and paper is just the first one to come to mind, after all, there had to be some human element in the wharehouse (unless they had robots pulling all the liquor, which would just be cool).
Had this been something more important, say the postal service, a hospital, or even a fast food chain, what would the fallback have been?
I have the feeling that these are those overly protective parents that make their kids wear tons of safety gear while engaging in extremely hazardous activities, such as walking.
We could ban tons of stuff from schools because it's 'dangerous'... Considering what people are exposed to every day, I'm suprised they went after this. While I can appreciate the whole be a good parent, look after kid's safety bit; I really don't recall anyone proving, substantially, that wi-fi poses any sort of safety risk. One can argue also that television and radio waves can also cause cancer/epilepsy/satan-worship/etc., so why not go after those too?
Just my rambling opinion...
-mo