Well, you might aswell chip $5 to the TVAA too, and the ringtoneAA will want in on the action. No doubt the BookAA too, and dont forget the starving children of the MusicVideoAA. What about PhotoAA too ("all those wallpapers on computers and phones are killing us!!")?
Pandering to these fuckers unfortunately has downsides.
And fast forward 10 years... "Our profits are dropping, can we up the levy to $10?"... repeat for every business association out there. And another 10years... etc.
It's all about locking people into a service, and once they're in, thats it. Treat them as bad as possible, and if they threaten to leave carefully point out that the contract is backed up by law and they are risking a lot by walking away.
Competing services are next to incomparable, so that the consumer does have "choice", but if they try and choose they'll probably end up with a service that isn't the best for them. Mobile phones are like this in the UK already - You can have a contract for x per month, with y "free" minutes, and z text messages, and a new phone every x' months. You can have y' bytes of data over GPRS, but your voicemail costs to check, plus a million other variables, all different between packages and networks.
If many products or services we currently use move themselves to some form of long term contracts then I think it'll be very hard to manage, even for a fully qualified accountant! But the CEO will loose his job if the profit is less than last years', so with ever increasing targets, gouging the customer for every last $CUR 0.01 fast becomes the only viable business plan.
I would be -very- interested to hear somebody come up with a real solution to this problem---a backup mechanism that real people can use so that normal, typical individual computer owners can back up their machines without paying a small fortune. Somehow, my gut says "not gonna happen". It is entirely too easy to design such a setup, and the fact that it has not been done suggests to me that there are vested interests in the industry preventing it from happening.
I think the vested interest is the whole home computer industry itself.
If Joe User's HDD fails, even if its just a fucked file system, to him the computer is completely dead. I think a substantial number of times Joe User will solve this issue by replacing the PC, either grudgingly, or use it as justification to upgrade to a new system. A new system means another payment of the MS tax (might partially explain why msbackup can't write to CD/DVD), possibly a new monitor, most likely new keyboard/mouse. Maybe a printer, and a new variety of cartridges so the one's Joe has stocked up on in the sales are now "useless"....
The ignorance of the uninformed masses gets preyed upon one hell of a lot more than is directly obvious....
Plus I discovered that Samba works so much better than Windows 2000 file sharing! Our home, computers (5 at one point, not including the server) could only sporatically see each other on the network via filesharing, but they can all see the Samba machine all the time.
When you have a Windows workgroup, the PCs will spend a lot of time fighting over who is the "browse master". This is based on the OS/spec of the individual machines, but with workstations going up and down the role will move about. Windows being Windows this invariably doesn't work smoothly, and so you end up with machines that appear to vanish (they'll work on IP address though). Samba will be configured such that it will assume the browse master role no matter what, and if it's turned on most of the time then the Windows workstations won't get confused as the browse master won't change.
Almost deathly so: my sleeping position had cut off circulation to the arm, apparently for a long time. The Sabbath dream had been my subconscious trying to 'rock' me into a different position.
I'm seemingly quite good at rolling over in my sleep onto my front, but with an arm under me. Several times upon waking I have wondered what's wrong with an arm, lifted it up (to check my hand is still there or something) but my elbow is dead, so I have ended up hitting myself in the upper torso or face! At that point I usually remember what's wrong with my arm, and how I've done it before...
I've also head-butted bedside cabinets, radiators etc. in my sleep waking to quite a start, but never to the point where I've made myself bleed!
VAT is set at a standard rate which (as far as I know) doesn't not vary between products.
There is a 5% VAT bracket AFAIK. I think it's actually on gas/electricity/heating oil, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was on petrol/diesel etc. too.
Like has been mentioned, retailers/suppliers/whoever do use the budget as an "excuse" to change their prices. I have seen petrol prices increase the day before a budget and again the day after (only like 1p/litre, but its the principle). I have also seen forecourt prices go up when there hasn't been a tax change in the budget! It could be the individual station, but knowing the greed of the oil industry....
Yeah, I noticed that too, and to be on the front page of/. is really quite poor. The CNN article does use "Kelvin" and "degrees Fahrneheit" correctly, and I was expecting that to be wrong. To be honest, the CNN article is good science reporting! A rarity in the mainstream these days.... though I've just noticed it was written by space.com, so that will explain it!
Yesterday (maybe this AM) on the BBC's TV news they had their science correspondant on talking about bird 'flu, and they (news caster + SC) talked about an epidemic or pandemic, and the science correspondant explained that for a pandemic to occur then it will have to "mix" in a human's body. From my understanding, the current worrysome strain cannot pass human-human, so to do so the virus would have to evolve or mutate (depending on how you want to look at it) in the human body, not mix. To me, this just appeared to be bad science reporting again in the mainstream media due to dumbing down, and on the BBC it appeared especially bad (not a for-profit organisation, where quality and excellence seems to be their aims).
The rest is just chapters upon chapters full of philosophical ranting about existance, quantum physics, and the universe, maybe pasted from another source.
It does look like the text is from elsewhere. I skipped through the text of the patent, just to see if it is all solid ramblings, and spotted the below in the section titled "DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS"
Aware of its existence, the android perceives and changes the same reality of human corporal experience, including the reality of the cosmos. This book, an introduction to the theory and science of androids, is intended to acquaint the reader with this new technological finding and to mark the beginning of an androidal age in which sentient machines alter the human universe.[My emphasis]
So it looks to me like this patent wasn't even fully read before being granted, though it looks to be about 12000 words!
The parent post asks why the car was allowed to travel all the way from Bradford to London. I don't know, but a number of possibilities come to mind. The most likely reason in my mind is that there was not a suitable location to isolate and take the occupants into custody without putting other officers or the general public in danger. British police are much less ready to engage in high speed chases because of the significant percentage that result in damage, injury or death to uninvolved vehicles or people.
Come on, we've all seen those programmes on the TV like Police, Camera, Action, and how the police use stingers and the like to stop chases (though it's speculation on my part that this'd be done in this case). The fact the tracking system was used in Bradford and the criminals were stopped in London (over 200 miles away according to the RAC's route planner) shows that it's just spin that this intrusive system caught these criminals.
I'm getting very sick of this government's lies about the use of technology. Technology is used for tax enforcement and fund raising mostly. Any benefits to society are a fortunate side-effect. Speed cameras prove that point - speeding is a factor of risk on the road, but it's easy to catch people breaking the artifically low limits (there's a lot of areas that recently have had the speed limit lowered from 60mph to 40, and a camera has been installed).
What is the most common type of road accident in the UK (probably worldwide)? Tail-endings, where the vehicle behind goes into the back of the one infront. So those in power choose to enforce speed limits more!?! No, tailendings happen for the simple reason that people drive too close to the vehicle infront. No other reason at all, but policing for that is "less profitable" than catching people commiting a victimless crime.
Gran Turismo 4 can save screenshots to USB memory sticks as.jpgs, and so can be moved from the console to a PC, and you can then do (debatably) useful stuff. Oh, and some controllers are USB - Logitech steering wheels for one.
So I don't know if Sony put a use to them but 3rd parties have.
[bugmenot] maybe once it worked for the ny times (for which i have my own login now anyways). sometimes it's just easier setting up your own using a free webmail account (so you don't get spammed)
If a site has to email you, then a webmail a/c is OK, but if not, use postmaster@domain, or webmaster@, ceo@ etc. and sign up for everything they offer. And of course you can sell my email address;)
Back in the day I tried this trick with divx.com, and they had been smart enough to refuse to accept @divx.com email addresses. They'd missed root@their primary MX though:)
Even without the root kit, Sony is being obnoxious with the DRM shit. I got a copy of Chevelle's new album and couldn't even rip it into MP3 without installing some damn proprietary Sony software, and then it would only rip into locked down WMA format. The CD was so screwed up that an older car CD player of mine wouldn't play it, Linux wouldn't recognize it, Windows kept trying to autorun it, but wouldn't recognize the audio side of it.
The way this DRM works is that they have invalid track layout info. PCs respect this info, and so don't see the audio session, but CD players ignore this info, they just play the first session. Your car's stereo obviously works like a CDROM.
This DRM can be avoided with Plextor CD drives. If you use their plextools software you can put the drive into single session mode, and it will only see the first session: the music. It can them be ripped or copied no probs (so you end up with the product you originally wanted and paid for).
I would LOVE for him to have to have the headaches and worries and stress that I have in running a business and trying to make us all wealthy in the process. I KNOW it would change his attitude.
See if you can give him some resposibilties that will give him some stress then. See if he deals with it like an adult.
If you view this link, close the tag pointing to Box, and look to the northwest there is a place called Collerne. Note the lack of any airbase west of Collerne. Now hit hybrid. Look at those runways...
My Wharfedale DVD player does respect the non-skipable notices, but I found (very quickly) that if I put a disk in, hit stop several times so it stays displaying the DVD logo and then press the menu button it will jump straight to the root menu.
I had to call 999 (UK "spelling" of 911) a couple of years ago from my Blueyonder (Birmingham cable) provided land-line. 999 failed to connect, repeatedly. I was just getting a dead line, and in the end I rang the operator and requested to be put through. The 999 call wasn't a major emergency, but I'd been broken into and it was the easiest way to contact the police. I never actually did anything about 999 not working, I just use it a random rant!
P.S. I feel I am justified in the above name and shame:)
anybody waving a legally-held handgun at a mugger would find themselves locked up pretty quickly.
Now that is sick.
Thats the US vs the UK's stance on gun ownership. The US' is essentailly that if everyone's armed, then everyone's equal. The UK play it that if no one's armed, everyone's equal.
I like the idea of external modules. Why build a camera into a PDA, when you can build Bluetooth into the PDA, and Bluetooth into a camera? The two will then be able to talk. Why build a phone into a PDA, when again, you could just talk remotely? And of course, we're already seeing the beginnings of this. Phone to PDA is pretty common, Bluetooth GPS systems are starting to emerge. How long for Bluetooth storage, I wonder?
A compact flash bluetooth adapter would be great. On the PDA you run an app that shares 512meg (for example) of your memory, and then connects to the card in the camera. The camera has a buffer, but otherwise reports its size as what ever it can talk to remotely. Of course, this could be extended to a laptop with bluetooth too, or even CF/wifi and a laptop?
Slashdot Mirror
Or a rootkit.
Pandering to these fuckers unfortunately has downsides.
And fast forward 10 years... "Our profits are dropping, can we up the levy to $10?"... repeat for every business association out there. And another 10years... etc.
Competing services are next to incomparable, so that the consumer does have "choice", but if they try and choose they'll probably end up with a service that isn't the best for them. Mobile phones are like this in the UK already - You can have a contract for x per month, with y "free" minutes, and z text messages, and a new phone every x' months. You can have y' bytes of data over GPRS, but your voicemail costs to check, plus a million other variables, all different between packages and networks.
If many products or services we currently use move themselves to some form of long term contracts then I think it'll be very hard to manage, even for a fully qualified accountant! But the CEO will loose his job if the profit is less than last years', so with ever increasing targets, gouging the customer for every last $CUR 0.01 fast becomes the only viable business plan.
I think the vested interest is the whole home computer industry itself.
If Joe User's HDD fails, even if its just a fucked file system, to him the computer is completely dead. I think a substantial number of times Joe User will solve this issue by replacing the PC, either grudgingly, or use it as justification to upgrade to a new system. A new system means another payment of the MS tax (might partially explain why msbackup can't write to CD/DVD), possibly a new monitor, most likely new keyboard/mouse. Maybe a printer, and a new variety of cartridges so the one's Joe has stocked up on in the sales are now "useless"....
The ignorance of the uninformed masses gets preyed upon one hell of a lot more than is directly obvious....
When you have a Windows workgroup, the PCs will spend a lot of time fighting over who is the "browse master". This is based on the OS/spec of the individual machines, but with workstations going up and down the role will move about. Windows being Windows this invariably doesn't work smoothly, and so you end up with machines that appear to vanish (they'll work on IP address though). Samba will be configured such that it will assume the browse master role no matter what, and if it's turned on most of the time then the Windows workstations won't get confused as the browse master won't change.
I'm seemingly quite good at rolling over in my sleep onto my front, but with an arm under me. Several times upon waking I have wondered what's wrong with an arm, lifted it up (to check my hand is still there or something) but my elbow is dead, so I have ended up hitting myself in the upper torso or face! At that point I usually remember what's wrong with my arm, and how I've done it before...
I've also head-butted bedside cabinets, radiators etc. in my sleep waking to quite a start, but never to the point where I've made myself bleed!
There is a 5% VAT bracket AFAIK. I think it's actually on gas/electricity/heating oil, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was on petrol/diesel etc. too.
Like has been mentioned, retailers/suppliers/whoever do use the budget as an "excuse" to change their prices. I have seen petrol prices increase the day before a budget and again the day after (only like 1p/litre, but its the principle). I have also seen forecourt prices go up when there hasn't been a tax change in the budget! It could be the individual station, but knowing the greed of the oil industry....
Error 404: word not found?
Yesterday (maybe this AM) on the BBC's TV news they had their science correspondant on talking about bird 'flu, and they (news caster + SC) talked about an epidemic or pandemic, and the science correspondant explained that for a pandemic to occur then it will have to "mix" in a human's body. From my understanding, the current worrysome strain cannot pass human-human, so to do so the virus would have to evolve or mutate (depending on how you want to look at it) in the human body, not mix. To me, this just appeared to be bad science reporting again in the mainstream media due to dumbing down, and on the BBC it appeared especially bad (not a for-profit organisation, where quality and excellence seems to be their aims).
I feel that QuietLagoon wasn't the one posting as AC in that case ;)
It does look like the text is from elsewhere. I skipped through the text of the patent, just to see if it is all solid ramblings, and spotted the below in the section titled "DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS"
Aware of its existence, the android perceives and changes the same reality of human corporal experience, including the reality of the cosmos. This book, an introduction to the theory and science of androids, is intended to acquaint the reader with this new technological finding and to mark the beginning of an androidal age in which sentient machines alter the human universe.[My emphasis]
So it looks to me like this patent wasn't even fully read before being granted, though it looks to be about 12000 words!
The parent post asks why the car was allowed to travel all the way from Bradford to London. I don't know, but a number of possibilities come to mind. The most likely reason in my mind is that there was not a suitable location to isolate and take the occupants into custody without putting other officers or the general public in danger. British police are much less ready to engage in high speed chases because of the significant percentage that result in damage, injury or death to uninvolved vehicles or people.
Come on, we've all seen those programmes on the TV like Police, Camera, Action, and how the police use stingers and the like to stop chases (though it's speculation on my part that this'd be done in this case). The fact the tracking system was used in Bradford and the criminals were stopped in London (over 200 miles away according to the RAC's route planner) shows that it's just spin that this intrusive system caught these criminals.
I'm getting very sick of this government's lies about the use of technology. Technology is used for tax enforcement and fund raising mostly. Any benefits to society are a fortunate side-effect. Speed cameras prove that point - speeding is a factor of risk on the road, but it's easy to catch people breaking the artifically low limits (there's a lot of areas that recently have had the speed limit lowered from 60mph to 40, and a camera has been installed).
What is the most common type of road accident in the UK (probably worldwide)? Tail-endings, where the vehicle behind goes into the back of the one infront. So those in power choose to enforce speed limits more!?! No, tailendings happen for the simple reason that people drive too close to the vehicle infront. No other reason at all, but policing for that is "less profitable" than catching people commiting a victimless crime.
So I don't know if Sony put a use to them but 3rd parties have.
If a site has to email you, then a webmail a/c is OK, but if not, use postmaster@domain, or webmaster@, ceo@ etc. and sign up for everything they offer. And of course you can sell my email address ;)
Back in the day I tried this trick with divx.com, and they had been smart enough to refuse to accept @divx.com email addresses. They'd missed root@their primary MX though :)
Gold's less chemically reactive silver, so I think what you've read could well be wrong...
The way this DRM works is that they have invalid track layout info. PCs respect this info, and so don't see the audio session, but CD players ignore this info, they just play the first session. Your car's stereo obviously works like a CDROM.
This DRM can be avoided with Plextor CD drives. If you use their plextools software you can put the drive into single session mode, and it will only see the first session: the music. It can them be ripped or copied no probs (so you end up with the product you originally wanted and paid for).
See if you can give him some resposibilties that will give him some stress then. See if he deals with it like an adult.
If you view this link, close the tag pointing to Box, and look to the northwest there is a place called Collerne. Note the lack of any airbase west of Collerne. Now hit hybrid. Look at those runways...
Oh, that Google!
Infact, just seen this from that search above http://www.google.com/ig. Nice.
My Wharfedale DVD player does respect the non-skipable notices, but I found (very quickly) that if I put a disk in, hit stop several times so it stays displaying the DVD logo and then press the menu button it will jump straight to the root menu.
http://xe.com/ for all other currencies apart from USD. It looks like Google only converts to USD, even the non-.com. I'd expect the .co.uk to convert to GBP and the .fr or .de to convert to EUR. But no:r
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=85+million+krono
http://www.google.fr/search?q=85+million+kronor
http://www.google.de/search?q=85+million+kronor
OK, so the French one doesn't work (presumably the French for Kronor isn't Kronor).
P.S. I feel I am justified in the above name and shame :)
Now that is sick.
Thats the US vs the UK's stance on gun ownership. The US' is essentailly that if everyone's armed, then everyone's equal. The UK play it that if no one's armed, everyone's equal.
I'm British FWIW.
A compact flash bluetooth adapter would be great. On the PDA you run an app that shares 512meg (for example) of your memory, and then connects to the card in the camera. The camera has a buffer, but otherwise reports its size as what ever it can talk to remotely. Of course, this could be extended to a laptop with bluetooth too, or even CF/wifi and a laptop?