That's the one job that can never be replaced by a machine. Trust me, you haven't lived until you've witnessed a Universal Translator whimper something about "Please oh god make the parse errors stop!", curl up in the corner, and start to cry.
(2) the compatibility to facilitate the exchange of existing data;
This could definately be a problem. Depending on how the agencies' data is stored, especially since the assumption is that they are currently using Closed Sourse Software, it may be difficult to get the data out!.
Not necessarily: if closed data formats were impenetrable, nobody would bother with encryption; they'd just send their Top Secret messages as MS Word.doc files...:P
Some managers will disingenuously try to use "Return on Investment" to retroactively justify past spending decisions, without regard to whether trying to salvage a poor decision is a cost-effective use of current and future investment.
ROI should be used as a measure not of how far you've gone, but rather how close you are to your current goal.
As an example which anyone reading/. will appreciate: Imagine you've spent 8 hours downloading a huge file over dialup, and it's 80% complete... and during that time, your friendly local Telco person has arrived and installed a DSL line that could download the same file in under an hour.
Which, then, is the better use of your time: to wait two hours for your current download to complete, or to ditch it for the one hour download?
Of course, as a precaution you might let the slow download continue in case the faster line doesn't work right, just as a company could keep the existing model in operation as a prototype of the new system is developed...
Companies that can't see this, or that foster a corporate culture in which ROI is used as a retroactive cover-your-ass rather than as an estimate of future costs and benefits, will in the long run be easy pickins for their more nimble-minded competitors.
That means that 'for direct marketing purposes' is not a condition. It is a descriptive sentence, it describes what will be sent. Your interpretation is correct, but the BBC writer messed up when he summarised the directive.
We must make allowances; perhaps English is not the BBC's native language... ;-)
Under the directive unsolicited e-mails may only be sent to individuals for direct marketing purposes and "with their prior consent" or where there is an existing customer relationship.
(1) Unsolicited e-mails (2) may only be sent to individuals for direct marketing purposes and (3) "with their prior consent" or (4) where there is an existing customer relationship.
So, by their phrasing of it, sending an email to a long-lost schoolmate, for example, would be (1) an unsolicited email, which is NOT (2) and (3), or (4), unless perhaps you had sold something to said schoolmate once upon a time.
Whether anyone would actually prosecute that, or even whether the law itself was phrased as sloppily as the article, is (one would hope) somewhat unlikely.
I'd venture that, by analogy, it's someone who uses a PC, but can't make ``magic'' with it...
Rescuing an old computer from the slavering jaws of the scrap-heap and gainfully employing it as a server definitely does not fall into that category.
In January, I rescued an old Pentium-133 and put it to work as my personal webserver -- with NetBSD, of course -- and it's rock-solid -- uptime is literally the amount of time between kernel compile and power outage... (67+ days before a power outage hit 30 days ago. I timed my upgrade to 1.6.1, including a new kernel, to coincide with plugging the power into a UPS... did it last night, actually. I suppose I'll have to schedule a few minutes of downtime in about 6 months to dust out the case... I really ought to look into some sort of fan filter...;)
Though the article implies that this would be directed towards commercial email, it doesn't seem to explicitly say so.
"Unsolicited email" could include personal and noncommercial messages.
Perhaps "Unsolicited Commercial Email", or even "Unsolicited Mass Email" should be addressed.
It'd be nice if the text of the proposed legislation were linked to somewhere. (This is your invitation, Gentle Reader, to post any such links of which you may have knowledge...:-P )
``Sure I might still have it on my HD, but if I never listen to it again, it's not really lost revenue is it?''
If you had gone to the record store, bought the CD, decided you hated it, couldn't take it back for a refund, and tossed it aside never to listen to it again... that's their lost revenue right there!;-)
If you know that the music sucks before buying it, then the record companies will have to come up with something good for a change... not to mention suddenly having to compete with thousands of independent musicians who suddenly have a much more level playing field and avenue of distribution...
Just be glad the telegraph industry didn't put up this much of a fight when it was their turn to evolve or die... we might still be tapping away in Morse code and paying by the word.
Yesterday I cooked up a 2.5.68 development kernel (the latest beta version as of this writing, according to kernel.org), since it has a fix for my newer chipset (damn VIA and their nonstandard AGP GART...), though I suspect that, depending on whether mine uses agp2 or agp3 I might be able to trick a stable kernel into playing nicely with it (assuming it's just a matter of model number, in which case agp_try_unsupported=1 comes to the rescue.)
My impression of the development kernel (aside from nice new features and not needing to 'make dep' anymore) is that it seems to be just a little bugfixin' away from being "ready"... and desktop users will appreciate the fact that ALSA seems to be in the kernel proper now, instead of being something to tack on the side afterwards.
The spelling mistake I can live with (yes, it should have been relevancy), but not the worst grammatical error in the book! Whenever you write it's you should put [gr?] after it, because it will usually be wrong! Possessive pronouns don't take apostrophes! You don't write hi's, so don't write it's unless you mean it is or it was. ARRRRRGGGGGH!!!
Perhaps you'd also like to lecture him for misspelling "pedantic"...;-)
Slashdot Mirror
$0...4Re +heY g01Ng +0 N33d @ L3Et 5p3aK 1n+erpre+Er nEXt?
That's the one job that can never be replaced by a machine. Trust me, you haven't lived until you've witnessed a Universal Translator whimper something about "Please oh god make the parse errors stop!", curl up in the corner, and start to cry.
(2) the compatibility to facilitate the exchange of existing data;
.doc files... :P
This could definately be a problem. Depending on how the agencies' data is stored, especially since the assumption is that they are currently using Closed Sourse Software, it may be difficult to get the data out!.
Not necessarily: if closed data formats were impenetrable, nobody would bother with encryption; they'd just send their Top Secret messages as MS Word
Not to mention, what's to keep the recipient from photographing the screen?
Presenting "no forward" emails as proof from leaks is a definite non sequitur.
Or so we hope.
Millennium-old copyrights won't exist until 2923.
Some managers will disingenuously try to use "Return on Investment" to retroactively justify past spending decisions, without regard to whether trying to salvage a poor decision is a cost-effective use of current and future investment.
/. will appreciate: Imagine you've spent 8 hours downloading a huge file over dialup, and it's 80% complete... and during that time, your friendly local Telco person has arrived and installed a DSL line that could download the same file in under an hour.
ROI should be used as a measure not of how far you've gone, but rather how close you are to your current goal.
As an example which anyone reading
Which, then, is the better use of your time: to wait two hours for your current download to complete, or to ditch it for the one hour download?
Of course, as a precaution you might let the slow download continue in case the faster line doesn't work right, just as a company could keep the existing model in operation as a prototype of the new system is developed...
Companies that can't see this, or that foster a corporate culture in which ROI is used as a retroactive cover-your-ass rather than as an estimate of future costs and benefits, will in the long run be easy pickins for their more nimble-minded competitors.
[Sinister voice]: Oh, they won't be using pop-ups, for long...
[Muahahahahahhahahha or insert-your-favorite-nefarious-chuckle-here]
>> Why doesn't he just cut through all the crap and patent the very idea of being a complete and utter asshole?
;-)
> Way too much prior art...
Dammit, you beat me to it!
Asshole.
The FlyUI [weblogs.com] already does this over in Europe, just without all the high-tech crap.
;-)
Dammit, this story is about high-tech pee. High-tech crap is clearly offtopic!
That means that 'for direct marketing purposes' is not a condition. It is a descriptive sentence, it describes what will be sent. Your interpretation is correct, but the BBC writer messed up when he summarised the directive.
;-)
We must make allowances; perhaps English is not the BBC's native language...
The linked BBC article says:
Under the directive unsolicited e-mails may only be sent to individuals for direct marketing purposes and "with their prior consent" or where there is an existing customer relationship.
(1) Unsolicited e-mails (2) may only be sent to individuals for direct marketing purposes and (3) "with their prior consent" or (4) where there is an existing customer relationship.
So, by their phrasing of it, sending an email to a long-lost schoolmate, for example, would be (1) an unsolicited email, which is NOT (2) and (3), or (4), unless perhaps you had sold something to said schoolmate once upon a time.
Whether anyone would actually prosecute that, or even whether the law itself was phrased as sloppily as the article, is (one would hope) somewhat unlikely.
Huh? What's a 'muggle' PC consumer?
;)
I'd venture that, by analogy, it's someone who uses a PC, but can't make ``magic'' with it...
Rescuing an old computer from the slavering jaws of the scrap-heap and gainfully employing it as a server definitely does not fall into that category.
In January, I rescued an old Pentium-133 and put it to work as my personal webserver -- with NetBSD, of course -- and it's rock-solid -- uptime is literally the amount of time between kernel compile and power outage... (67+ days before a power outage hit 30 days ago. I timed my upgrade to 1.6.1, including a new kernel, to coincide with plugging the power into a UPS... did it last night, actually. I suppose I'll have to schedule a few minutes of downtime in about 6 months to dust out the case... I really ought to look into some sort of fan filter...
Billg (in Dark Helmet): Linus! ... I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate!
Linus: What does that make us?
Billg: Absolutely nothing, which is what I am about to make you!
Though the article implies that this would be directed towards commercial email, it doesn't seem to explicitly say so.
:-P )
"Unsolicited email" could include personal and noncommercial messages.
Perhaps "Unsolicited Commercial Email", or even "Unsolicited Mass Email" should be addressed.
It'd be nice if the text of the proposed legislation were linked to somewhere. (This is your invitation, Gentle Reader, to post any such links of which you may have knowledge...
Whoever's left will be their new market for "Windows M.E. (Mutant Edition)" ...
I know that guy.
/. story... kudos!)
(1:46 Metroid Prime? Eh.
Getting his own
This went on for about three weeks, until one afternoon I had to put a particularly intense game on hold to go answer the call of nature.
Wow, you sure know how to hold it in!
That was just your wall mirror, telling you that after 3 days of playing nonstop, you definitely needed a shower and shave...
``Sure I might still have it on my HD, but if I never listen to it again, it's not really lost revenue is it?''
;-)
If you had gone to the record store, bought the CD, decided you hated it, couldn't take it back for a refund, and tossed it aside never to listen to it again... that's their lost revenue right there!
If you know that the music sucks before buying it, then the record companies will have to come up with something good for a change... not to mention suddenly having to compete with thousands of independent musicians who suddenly have a much more level playing field and avenue of distribution...
Just be glad the telegraph industry didn't put up this much of a fight when it was their turn to evolve or die... we might still be tapping away in Morse code and paying by the word.
Yesterday I cooked up a 2.5.68 development kernel (the latest beta version as of this writing, according to kernel.org), since it has a fix for my newer chipset (damn VIA and their nonstandard AGP GART...), though I suspect that, depending on whether mine uses agp2 or agp3 I might be able to trick a stable kernel into playing nicely with it (assuming it's just a matter of model number, in which case agp_try_unsupported=1 comes to the rescue.)
My impression of the development kernel (aside from nice new features and not needing to 'make dep' anymore) is that it seems to be just a little bugfixin' away from being "ready"... and desktop users will appreciate the fact that ALSA seems to be in the kernel proper now, instead of being something to tack on the side afterwards.
The spelling mistake I can live with (yes, it should have been relevancy), but not the worst grammatical error in the book! Whenever you write it's you should put [gr?] after it, because it will usually be wrong! Possessive pronouns don't take apostrophes! You don't write hi's, so don't write it's unless you mean it is or it was. ARRRRRGGGGGH!!!
;-)
Perhaps you'd also like to lecture him for misspelling "pedantic"...
"There will be a day of reckoning for Red Hat and SuSE when this is done."
Wow. Reminds me of every cardboard villain in every hokey 1980s action cartoon...
SCO: "You haven't seen the last of us, do-gooders!"
Thanks for the memories, SCO. We'll miss you after your well-deserved demise...
*Large labels get web site and have music for download.
*Indipendant artist also makes website, has music for download.
And there you go... indi-artist and Brittney spears on the same equal footing.
Technically, indi-artist is on better footing, since Ms. Spears is a bit top-heavy.
Poor oppressed soul! You have singlehandedly convinced me that life is not fair.
*grin*