While that might be fun, I don't consider it especially compelling -- certainly not to the tune of $100K.
Unless you are spending some time up there and actually doing some activity I don't see ANY point to paying that sort of money for the trip. Zero gravity would be exciting for about 24 hours until you got bored with floating around. The view of the Earth, while certainly amazing, isn't going to be all that great after that same 24 hours.
So what are you going to do for the rest of your time up there? Read a book? Eat shitty preprocessed food?
Sorry, but unless we are landing on some rock outside of Earth and going on a nature walk or doing SOMETHING I'm not terribly interested in paying $100k.
I equate this to paying $1000 to drive to Niagra Falls, looking at it from the car, and turning around and going home.
You ever had the steering wheel lock on you when you have the car in the off position? Could you imagine if you had turned the ignition all the way off and had to avoid an object in the road... You overcompensated and locked the wheel. What happens now?
If this ever happens to you do not ever attempt to turn the ignition all the way off... In most cases you will lose both your power steering and your power braking. Make sure that you keep it at least on partially as most cars will not lose total power this way.
If you are traveling at a high rate of speed losing power steering/braking will cause more problems for you. First try neutral and even a lower gear if for some reason neutral isn't engaging. It's going to over-rev the engine but personally I'd prefer to replace a transmission or the entire engine rather than my blood or organs.
I couldn't read the translated article as it just wasn't working so I don't know if this was suggested or not but if it wasn't suggested by the police I just can't understand why not.
The reason that Smirnoff Ice is popular is because it tastes like lemon-lime pop and it gets girls loaded.
While another citrus malt-beverage wasn't going to turn any heads in this market a ginseng/caffeine alternative probably isn't either.
Nothing like supporting the dangers of mixing an upper and a downer together. Yeah plenty of people drink Jagerbombs and coffee after drinking but it isn't marketed in the same drink.
I'll stick to beer and I have a feeling that my fiance will stick to SI.
Ever thought that B-dubs is asking you for your phone number in case you forget to pickup your takeout order? They certainly don't ask for it when you place an order in the resturaent. Come on people... pizza joints have been doing this for decades. Take off the tin foil hat.
Pizza joints typically deliver your food to you. Any BW3 I have been to does not. I can see asking for a phone number in case the delivery person is lost (usually a common occurance with the pizza places I deal with) or to verify that they aren't delivering 100 pizzas as a prank.
And currently they can deny you the sale as well (which has happened to me at Radio Shack and at restaurants).
When I am asked for my phone number I politely tell them "No thank you." This usually gets a negative response of "sir, I need your phone number to complete the sale." I then again tell them politely that I am not interested in giving out my phone number. Sometimes this will work and they will just cancel it or whatever but at other times it must receive managerial attention which includes them explaining why they need it, etc.
Why don't we just ban the practice outright for the reasons I stated above and be done with it. There is absolutely no fucking reason that Best Buy needs my phone number when I buy something. There is no reason that BW3 needs to know my phone number when I order 12 wings.
The telemarketers argued that the list violated their commercial free-speech rights, that it unfairly did not apply to political and charitable solicitations, and that less restrictive regulations already allow consumers to block unwanted calls.
Well, before the list I was getting several calls a week and now I get none except "personalized messages from the President of the United States"... What regulations existed before that let me get off their list? Telling them I wanted on or off their list (whichever they interpreted as the correct way) or allowing me to have caller ID so that I could see "Unknown" show up and choose not to answer only to have them fill up my answering machine with a partial message?
I do agree that political messages should be disallowed. It would be different if the political messages were from non-profit groups representing a candidate that wasn't using tax dollars to campaign and wasn't bringing in MILLIONS of dollars of donated money to spread his name... I do NOT appreciate a 6pm phone call from "President Bush" where he tells me more of what I don't care to hear. I especially don't appreciate when it runs onto my answering machine messages too. I want to declare all the area outside of my phone line a Free Speech Zone. He's free to spread his message there where I don't have to listen to it.
How about next we ban companies from asking for your phone number every single chance they get? Buffalo Wild Wings asks when you order, Best Buy now asks when you buy something, we all know and love Shit Shack for what they used to do and probably still do, etc. They are asking for one reason and one reason only... To get your number so that they (and their subsidiaries) can call you even though you're on a DNC list. It's a fucking scam plain and simple. There's no reason to even bother with DNC legislation if we are going to allow gaping holes to exist to trick the population into handing over the information the scam artists need. If our government is really concerned with "protecting us from evil" they can start right fucking there.
Keep the god damn phone lines for opt-in calls only after all that's REALLY protecting my privacy right?
As much as I know we all hate MS funded "research" I just can't trust the number of times that an application is downloaded as market-share. Sorry, that just does not compute...
Hell, I have downloaded Firefox on countless occasions (usually to test a new version). It never lasts more than an hour on my machine. Does that count as a piece of market-share in the browser war when I don't actually use it?
I have downloaded OpenOffice multiple times as well (on multiple computers) to test and to tour the features newer version have to offer. Again, the install may last a few hours while I test the features that I require. So my 25+ downloads counted towards the 16+ million?
I am glad to see that somewhat viable alternatives are coming into their own and getting media attention but I don't know if we really need to be associated with false numbers just to get the word out. It doesn't exactly give us a leg to stand on when MSFT fires back about the artificially inflated numbers.
Billing Microsoft as the good guys and Apple the villains of the piece - at least as far as corporate America, rather than users, is concerned, Ballmer said: "We've had DRM in Windows for years. The most common format of music on an iPod is 'stolen'."
I don't understand the "corporate America" distinction. Is he talking about people downloading stuff to their iPod from the computers at work and stealing it that way? Because just about every Windows user I know has a computer at least 50% full of stolen shit (usually including the OS itself). MSFT is somehow not supporting theft because they don't have an iPod clone and their OS has DRM? I would go so far as to claim that PocketPCs support piracy but MSFT didn't create the hardware they just created the software. I guess you have to do both to support the thieves.
Sorry, that doesn't make me think any less of the iPod and it certainly doesn't make me think any more highly of Windows.
it amazes me that GWBush still has the balls to stand in front of people and talk about it when he managed to bomb the f#@$ out of a country for no rhyme or reason. Damn shame.
No, it's a damn shame that the idiots in this country believe that he is right. His administration has been caught in the liars den multiple times yet somehow they are able to get people to continue to turn to them in the face of this "imminent threat".
Once the people of this country get their heads out of their false reality created by what they are fed via consolidated media perhaps they will learn. It is unlikely that anything will change because people refuse to think for themselves. They want to be a passive recipient of all the news they get.
You cannot be successful in life being a passive recipient in anything.
The tubes episode is a case study of the intersection between the politics of pre-emption and the inherent ambiguity of intelligence.
This was a case study in lying and having the fucking people fall for it because we were told to have faith in the leaders of our country or be labeled unpatriotic.
On Aug. 17, 2001, weeks before the twin towers fell, the team published a secret Technical Intelligence Note, a detailed analysis that laid out its doubts about the tubes' suitability for centrifuges.
Perhaps this is partially why the administration originally claimed that Hussein was not a credible threat to the United States?
One senior official at the agency said its "fundamental approach" was to tell policy makers about dissenting views. Another senior official acknowledged that some of their agency's reports "weren't as well caveated as, in retrospect, they should have been." But he added, "There was certainly nothing that was hidden."
Let's not fuck around here. It's called making the viewpoint you want noticed more apparent than those you don't regardless of whether or not it's true... This is what any good position paper should do. "Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror, and seated atop 10 percent of the world's oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world's energy supplies, directly threaten America's friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail."
Sounds like exactly what the United States ended up doing. It decided it was right and it had the power to make sure it got what it wanted out of the deal. Notice the reference to oil... Not to the safety of the United States' populace. Oil. Cute.
If those people don't know Internet Protocol from Intellectual Property we should fire their asses rather than let them drive every competant person they can away from the job.
Hah, yeah, that'll work in a country where there is an extremely high approval rating for an individual that can't pronounce half the words he had prepared for and looks like a helpless 8th grader defending his position in his first debate.
Yoran has privately confided to industry colleagues his frustrations in recent months over what he considers the department's lack of attention paid to computer security issues, according to lobbyists and others who recounted these conversations on condition they not be identified because the talks were personal.
Of course they aren't paying any attention. People just aren't knowledgeable enough about the threat of cybersecurity to give a shit. These people think that there is a real threat that their house may be singled out in a dirty-bomb attack because the Bush administration is happy to have them think that. As long as the Bush administration can keep people's minds on a single track of terrorism there's no need to bring to light other avenues of attack. Why should they diversify right now? They might bore the public with their "crying wolf" on dirty-bombs and airplane searches and would need another shiny object to get everyone to pay attention to.
About 90 percent of computer users interviewed remembered the name of the performer from the last Super Bowl halftime show, while only 60 percent knew when they last updated their computer security program.
No fucking way, people remember the name of a performer from the Super Bowl after it was banged into their heads on every media outlet for two months straight? OMFG, I cannot believe it. You mean that these same people who are so concerned with the atrocities being fed to them on TV aren't concerned or knowledgeable about their computer? I can't believe it!
Face it, people don't give two flying fucks about being educated in computer know-how. They want to flip the switch and have it work. If it doesn't work they want to call up their ISP and have them fix it. Their computer is a dumb terminal for their ISP's webpage and http://www.thehun.com. As far as people guessing their chances at being hit by malicious code... They probably seriously believe that malicious code means that they bring home a disk and put it in their drive and run a program that will be an old-sk00l virus. They have no idea that there are programs out there "spying" on them every minute of their surfing experience. They just don't care enough to know. Plus these same people probably do think that their chances of hitting the lottery are good as they are dumb enough to ignore real news for their own realm of importance (Reality TV).
Poor Grant, even after death, has become quiet the specimen. Poor guy. Can't we let him RIP?
Although I think it's great that we are creating bills that we believe will curb counterfeiting shouldn't we also be working to make them look good? The new colors and everything are nice but definitely overused. It makes the bills look crowded and tacky. Reminds me of a hairdresser with too much makeup. The little yellow 20s and what appear to be 50s on the back of the new color bills are horrid. I looks like I dropped the bills in honey and couldn't clean it all off.
If I'm gonna pay $50 for a piece of paper it should at least be clean:-)
I thought it was part of my move in package when I bought a house. I figured I needed something to do before the furniture was brought over so I carried my laptop in and low and behold "linksys" and "linksys2" showed up as available networks.
How nice, I have free Internet! I was happy to use their beaconing WLANs until I got my own connection (and because Charter sucks and Frontier wasn't much better I was lucky to have it).
Personally, I thought it was absolutely wonderful. It made my life a lot easier and because one is a Charter customer and ther other is a DSL customer I assume that if my DSL goes down at least I have the possibility of an Internet connection via Cable.
The residential customers also cost them a lot of money to support, either directly or indirectly, so what is happening here is that de-centralizing the distribution of media and communications will require the cable companies and telcos to streamline their operations.
So what you are saying is that they make no money on their residential customers and they only promote the service out of the goodness of their hearts right? They have no interest in spreading their power across the country and buying up every little company out there to take under their wing right?
This is America and we work under the Capitalist system. If something isn't profitable it is either done away with completely or bought up by the government. Comcast wouldn't be buying up every cable company in the country to spread their influences if it wasn't profitable.
Believe me. The conglomorates will not appreciate losing customers to this sort of operation. Luckily for them they can control the content that these neighborhood groups can receive and at what cost.
At this point, intellectual property lawyers are supposed to start reaching for their telephones to call Canada, but it won't do any good because all this content is perfectly legal and here's how. With the exception of local channels, which come from an antenna, all of Andrew's video content comes from a C-band (big dish) satellite receiver (receivers, actually), and is fully paid for. "I buy the channels just like a cable system does or a motel that wants to offer HBO, from the National Programming Service," says Andrew. "And as a result I pay wholesale prices. People don't realize how much of a markup there in is the cable business. The Discovery Networks, for example, cost me $0.26 per customer per month. The IP laws in both the U.S. and Canada say that if I have legal access to this content I can store and use it. And the over-the-air channels, of course, are free."
Hmm, I wish that everyone could have a large dish in their neighborhood. Hell I had to put up with a ton of shit at my apartment complex to get a small dish ($400 damage deposit -- $300 non-refundable, make sure it wasn't attached to anything, etc). I have to sign a waiver at my house because of the HOA. I thought the FCC mandated that having a small dish was legal and easy? I just can't see anyone having a large dish to bring this in at least in my area.
If getting this stuff for.26/mo is possible why aren't more people doing it? Is it because it isn't as easy as Cringley makes it seem? This might be possible now but once entire neighborhoods across the nation (and world) start to do this it might not be quite as easy. Remember, the conglomerates control a lot of things including media channels. You think that they are going to put up with losing the revenue from their residential customers?
Re:Corps will continue to rule, people are sheep..
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Amateur Revolution?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
But you cannot discount rap any longer. It truly comes from the grassroots and I think fits the intent of this article. Now the STATE of rap is questionable, but I don't think you can question its legitimacy and power.
I don't discount the "power" that rap holds in the music world. What I do discount is that it is still a rebellion against traditional music. They are just a different genre. They certainly aren't fighting "The Man".
Corps will continue to rule, people are sheep...
on
Amateur Revolution?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Rap, for one, started as do-it-yourself music among lower-income black men from distressed urban neighborhoods, recorded by artists on inexpensive equipment and distributed on handmade tapes by local labels. Yet within two decades, rap has become the dominant popular music across the world. In league with Pro-Am music distribution made possible by Napster and Kazaa, it has turned the entire record industry on its head.
And it has now become the same money-hungry scheme that the rest of music is. Silver teeth, 80 gram bling, expensive cars, big houses, "hoes", problems with the law, etc. I don't see the difference between rap stars and more "traditional" music. I give this one 0/100.
Likewise, according to one estimate, 90% of the content in The Sims is created by a Pro-Am sector of The Sims ' playing community, a distributed, self-organizing group whose players are constantly training one another and innovating.
I suppose you could say that's why it is successful. I honestly believe that Quake was so very successful because people could play it the way they wanted to but I still think that the original game had a lot to do with it. If the base gameplay isn't all that great why would people be interested in building on that? I give this one 50/100.
Some professionals will find that unsettling; they will seek to defend their monopolies. The more enlightened will understand that the landscape is changing. Knowledge is widely distributed, not controlled in a few ivory towers. The most powerful organizations will enable professionals and amateurs to combine distributed know-how to solve complex problems.
More importantly the corporations find this unsettling and they have the backing to make it financially impossible for the "amateurs" to compete.
Pro-Am activity will continue to expand. Longer healthy life spans will allow people in their forties and fifties to start taking up Pro-Am activities as second careers. Rising participation in education will give people skills to pursue those activities. New media and technology enable Pro-Ams to organize.
Perhaps it has to do more with intelligent people understanding that they don't appreciate what's going on in the coporate world and they realize that they can at least do a little bit to start change in motion. I am not saying that they will get very far before the corporations do what they can to make the "amateurs" lives miserable but at least it gets the ball rolling.
Pro-Ams could fuel mass participation in formal politics and in social entrepreneurship.
No they most certainly will not. Not unless these "amateurs" get the election process changed to a reality TV style format. People just don't care enough about politics and social entrepeneurship. They want to sit at home and drug their brains with TV. That's all they want out of life. House, two SUVs, a jetski, and 2.75 kids.
Plus, if amateurs were so great the flood of high quality home-made porno would be a ton better than what Vivid puts out. Personally, I'd rather watch the oversized men fuck women with over-sized Nip/Tuck'd boobs and airbrushed looking bodies than watching a fat, hairy, man fuck some underaged looking dark-circle eyed skank on the floor of a Super8 hotel room. That's me though;)
From the blurb:
Pro-Am workers, their networks and movements, will help reshape society in the next two decades.
Corporations, their money, and their slaves will continue to reshape society via their direct control over multiple media outlets (solidified TV/news, radio, Internet) not the public. Grass-roots campaigns have always existed on the fringe and while their causes are noble the masses love to be sheep while thinking they aren't.
The government wasted its best opportunity to avoid this result three years ago, when the incoming Bush Justice Department, in a stunning reversal, decided to drop its "tying" claim. Still, the road not taken -- pressing Microsoft to offer a neutral choice of Web browsers for use with Windows -- started to look a lot more appealing this summer, when Internet Explorer's security flaws made national headlines.
Well at least now the DOJ has a lot more pressing matters at hand... Like getting the recent ruling against the Patriot Act overturned so those evil fucking terrorists can't get away and those sneaky American citizens can't hide their financial records from them.
I always felt that if the government continued to pursue their case against MSFT they would only pay for it in higher licensing fees later. Choose your battles... Money from the terrorists and the citizens or money from MSFT?
Perhaps you're so surprised (or confused?) because you failed to actually read the article. This was a design of Dilbert's "dream" house, not the house he currently lives in. A subt hint would be the article title, "Dilbert's Ultimate House".
He lives in a world of B&W pencil. It seems just wrong to me for his ultimate house to be in anything but the same.
After reading through the stacks of Dilbert cartoon books in my college apartment's bathroom I was under the assumption that Dilbert's house looked something out of a third grader's art class.
Turns out I was completely wrong and it looks like something out of Art 453, The CGI of Star Wars and how it can be applied to comics.
I guess I preferred living in a world of Simpsons where I didn't have to mentally map out the entire episode based on a "fact" or look at Dilbert's house in anything except black and white pencil.
You paid for a non-transferable, limited use license to run XP on the specific machine that you purchased. If you want a transferable license you can get one at Best Buy.
I paid for a piece of software that I should be able to use at my leisure. When someone ships a computer they shouldn't be tied down to what the vendor of the OS wants. They should be allowed to do what they want with what they got.
The consulting firm issued a report on Wednesday stating that about 40 percent of Linux PCs will be modified to run an illegal copy of Windows, a bait-and-switch maneuver that lowers the cost of obtaining a Windows PC.
I wasn't aware that PCs were made by Microsoft. I realize that B. Crew wants every PC to be sold with Windows and makes in very difficult for vendors to do anything but sell them that way, but I am pretty certain it isn't a requirement for Windows to be on every single PC out there.
As a result, the number of desktop Linux PCs that ship will exceed the actual percentage of Linux machines that get installed in the real world. Desktop Linux will account for about 5 percent of desktops shipped in 2004, according to Gartner, with 10.5 percent of the desktops in Asia shipping with Linux this year. However, the installed base of Linux will come to only 1.3 percent.
In 2008, Linux will account for 7.5 percent of PCs shipped, but only 2.6 percent of the installed base, about the same that Apple's installed base will be then.
Star News reports that by 2009 15.29% of the The National Enquirer's stories will be completely false and that their own stories will overtake FoxNews as the most truthful news source on the planet.
My last machine came with XP installed. I didn't even get to have a CD of XP other than the restore CD. The key on the back of the computer was invalid anyway and MSFT had no suggestions for me other than using a valid key... So, we have to buy a computer with Windows on it because MSFT won't be friendly with vendors that don't offer 100% Windows only. We get that computer with Windows but we really can't use the copy on any other machine and we don't get the install CD and it may not even have a working key. Yet we are supposed to believe that this is acceptable and poor MSFT will lose money to piracy.
I paid for my copy of Windows XP and I expect to get my use out of it whether it follows MSFT's rules or not. I would assume the same rings true elsewhere. Who the hell wants to pay 20%+ of their PC cost for Windows if they can't even use it?
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While that might be fun, I don't consider it especially compelling -- certainly not to the tune of $100K.
Unless you are spending some time up there and actually doing some activity I don't see ANY point to paying that sort of money for the trip. Zero gravity would be exciting for about 24 hours until you got bored with floating around. The view of the Earth, while certainly amazing, isn't going to be all that great after that same 24 hours.
So what are you going to do for the rest of your time up there? Read a book? Eat shitty preprocessed food?
Sorry, but unless we are landing on some rock outside of Earth and going on a nature walk or doing SOMETHING I'm not terribly interested in paying $100k.
I equate this to paying $1000 to drive to Niagra Falls, looking at it from the car, and turning around and going home.
You ever had the steering wheel lock on you when you have the car in the off position? Could you imagine if you had turned the ignition all the way off and had to avoid an object in the road... You overcompensated and locked the wheel. What happens now?
Don't think you are so high and mighty.
If this ever happens to you do not ever attempt to turn the ignition all the way off... In most cases you will lose both your power steering and your power braking. Make sure that you keep it at least on partially as most cars will not lose total power this way.
If you are traveling at a high rate of speed losing power steering/braking will cause more problems for you. First try neutral and even a lower gear if for some reason neutral isn't engaging. It's going to over-rev the engine but personally I'd prefer to replace a transmission or the entire engine rather than my blood or organs.
I couldn't read the translated article as it just wasn't working so I don't know if this was suggested or not but if it wasn't suggested by the police I just can't understand why not.
The reason that Smirnoff Ice is popular is because it tastes like lemon-lime pop and it gets girls loaded.
While another citrus malt-beverage wasn't going to turn any heads in this market a ginseng/caffeine alternative probably isn't either.
Nothing like supporting the dangers of mixing an upper and a downer together. Yeah plenty of people drink Jagerbombs and coffee after drinking but it isn't marketed in the same drink.
I'll stick to beer and I have a feeling that my fiance will stick to SI.
Ever thought that B-dubs is asking you for your phone number in case you forget to pickup your takeout order? They certainly don't ask for it when you place an order in the resturaent. Come on people... pizza joints have been doing this for decades. Take off the tin foil hat.
Pizza joints typically deliver your food to you. Any BW3 I have been to does not. I can see asking for a phone number in case the delivery person is lost (usually a common occurance with the pizza places I deal with) or to verify that they aren't delivering 100 pizzas as a prank.
Also, remember... you can always say no.
And currently they can deny you the sale as well (which has happened to me at Radio Shack and at restaurants).
When I am asked for my phone number I politely tell them "No thank you." This usually gets a negative response of "sir, I need your phone number to complete the sale." I then again tell them politely that I am not interested in giving out my phone number. Sometimes this will work and they will just cancel it or whatever but at other times it must receive managerial attention which includes them explaining why they need it, etc.
Why don't we just ban the practice outright for the reasons I stated above and be done with it. There is absolutely no fucking reason that Best Buy needs my phone number when I buy something. There is no reason that BW3 needs to know my phone number when I order 12 wings.
Maybe I'm missing something here?
The telemarketers argued that the list violated their commercial free-speech rights, that it unfairly did not apply to political and charitable solicitations, and that less restrictive regulations already allow consumers to block unwanted calls.
Well, before the list I was getting several calls a week and now I get none except "personalized messages from the President of the United States"... What regulations existed before that let me get off their list? Telling them I wanted on or off their list (whichever they interpreted as the correct way) or allowing me to have caller ID so that I could see "Unknown" show up and choose not to answer only to have them fill up my answering machine with a partial message?
I do agree that political messages should be disallowed. It would be different if the political messages were from non-profit groups representing a candidate that wasn't using tax dollars to campaign and wasn't bringing in MILLIONS of dollars of donated money to spread his name... I do NOT appreciate a 6pm phone call from "President Bush" where he tells me more of what I don't care to hear. I especially don't appreciate when it runs onto my answering machine messages too. I want to declare all the area outside of my phone line a Free Speech Zone. He's free to spread his message there where I don't have to listen to it.
How about next we ban companies from asking for your phone number every single chance they get? Buffalo Wild Wings asks when you order, Best Buy now asks when you buy something, we all know and love Shit Shack for what they used to do and probably still do, etc. They are asking for one reason and one reason only... To get your number so that they (and their subsidiaries) can call you even though you're on a DNC list. It's a fucking scam plain and simple. There's no reason to even bother with DNC legislation if we are going to allow gaping holes to exist to trick the population into handing over the information the scam artists need. If our government is really concerned with "protecting us from evil" they can start right fucking there.
Keep the god damn phone lines for opt-in calls only after all that's REALLY protecting my privacy right?
As much as I know we all hate MS funded "research" I just can't trust the number of times that an application is downloaded as market-share. Sorry, that just does not compute...
Hell, I have downloaded Firefox on countless occasions (usually to test a new version). It never lasts more than an hour on my machine. Does that count as a piece of market-share in the browser war when I don't actually use it?
I have downloaded OpenOffice multiple times as well (on multiple computers) to test and to tour the features newer version have to offer. Again, the install may last a few hours while I test the features that I require. So my 25+ downloads counted towards the 16+ million?
I am glad to see that somewhat viable alternatives are coming into their own and getting media attention but I don't know if we really need to be associated with false numbers just to get the word out. It doesn't exactly give us a leg to stand on when MSFT fires back about the artificially inflated numbers.
(and what am I missing?)
legal P2P like FurthurNET or bt.etree.org and Sharing the Groove.
archive.org/nugs.net (also BitTorrent and streaming)/etc
Billing Microsoft as the good guys and Apple the villains of the piece - at least as far as corporate America, rather than users, is concerned, Ballmer said: "We've had DRM in Windows for years. The most common format of music on an iPod is 'stolen'."
I don't understand the "corporate America" distinction. Is he talking about people downloading stuff to their iPod from the computers at work and stealing it that way? Because just about every Windows user I know has a computer at least 50% full of stolen shit (usually including the OS itself). MSFT is somehow not supporting theft because they don't have an iPod clone and their OS has DRM? I would go so far as to claim that PocketPCs support piracy but MSFT didn't create the hardware they just created the software. I guess you have to do both to support the thieves.
Sorry, that doesn't make me think any less of the iPod and it certainly doesn't make me think any more highly of Windows.
it amazes me that GWBush still has the balls to stand in front of people and talk about it when he managed to bomb the f#@$ out of a country for no rhyme or reason. Damn shame.
No, it's a damn shame that the idiots in this country believe that he is right. His administration has been caught in the liars den multiple times yet somehow they are able to get people to continue to turn to them in the face of this "imminent threat".
Once the people of this country get their heads out of their false reality created by what they are fed via consolidated media perhaps they will learn. It is unlikely that anything will change because people refuse to think for themselves. They want to be a passive recipient of all the news they get.
You cannot be successful in life being a passive recipient in anything.
The tubes episode is a case study of the intersection between the politics of pre-emption and the inherent ambiguity of intelligence.
This was a case study in lying and having the fucking people fall for it because we were told to have faith in the leaders of our country or be labeled unpatriotic.
On Aug. 17, 2001, weeks before the twin towers fell, the team published a secret Technical Intelligence Note, a detailed analysis that laid out its doubts about the tubes' suitability for centrifuges.
Perhaps this is partially why the administration originally claimed that Hussein was not a credible threat to the United States?
One senior official at the agency said its "fundamental approach" was to tell policy makers about dissenting views. Another senior official acknowledged that some of their agency's reports "weren't as well caveated as, in retrospect, they should have been." But he added, "There was certainly nothing that was hidden."
Let's not fuck around here. It's called making the viewpoint you want noticed more apparent than those you don't regardless of whether or not it's true... This is what any good position paper should do.
"Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror, and seated atop 10 percent of the world's oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world's energy supplies, directly threaten America's friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail."
Sounds like exactly what the United States ended up doing. It decided it was right and it had the power to make sure it got what it wanted out of the deal. Notice the reference to oil... Not to the safety of the United States' populace. Oil. Cute.
If those people don't know Internet Protocol from Intellectual Property we should fire their asses rather than let them drive every competant person they can away from the job.
Hah, yeah, that'll work in a country where there is an extremely high approval rating for an individual that can't pronounce half the words he had prepared for and looks like a helpless 8th grader defending his position in his first debate.
Yoran has privately confided to industry colleagues his frustrations in recent months over what he considers the department's lack of attention paid to computer security issues, according to lobbyists and others who recounted these conversations on condition they not be identified because the talks were personal.
Of course they aren't paying any attention. People just aren't knowledgeable enough about the threat of cybersecurity to give a shit. These people think that there is a real threat that their house may be singled out in a dirty-bomb attack because the Bush administration is happy to have them think that. As long as the Bush administration can keep people's minds on a single track of terrorism there's no need to bring to light other avenues of attack. Why should they diversify right now? They might bore the public with their "crying wolf" on dirty-bombs and airplane searches and would need another shiny object to get everyone to pay attention to.
About 90 percent of computer users interviewed remembered the name of the performer from the last Super Bowl halftime show, while only 60 percent knew when they last updated their computer security program.
No fucking way, people remember the name of a performer from the Super Bowl after it was banged into their heads on every media outlet for two months straight? OMFG, I cannot believe it. You mean that these same people who are so concerned with the atrocities being fed to them on TV aren't concerned or knowledgeable about their computer? I can't believe it!
Face it, people don't give two flying fucks about being educated in computer know-how. They want to flip the switch and have it work. If it doesn't work they want to call up their ISP and have them fix it. Their computer is a dumb terminal for their ISP's webpage and http://www.thehun.com. As far as people guessing their chances at being hit by malicious code... They probably seriously believe that malicious code means that they bring home a disk and put it in their drive and run a program that will be an old-sk00l virus. They have no idea that there are programs out there "spying" on them every minute of their surfing experience. They just don't care enough to know. Plus these same people probably do think that their chances of hitting the lottery are good as they are dumb enough to ignore real news for their own realm of importance (Reality TV).
Poor Grant, even after death, has become quiet the specimen. Poor guy. Can't we let him RIP?
:-)
Although I think it's great that we are creating bills that we believe will curb counterfeiting shouldn't we also be working to make them look good? The new colors and everything are nice but definitely overused. It makes the bills look crowded and tacky. Reminds me of a hairdresser with too much makeup. The little yellow 20s and what appear to be 50s on the back of the new color bills are horrid. I looks like I dropped the bills in honey and couldn't clean it all off.
If I'm gonna pay $50 for a piece of paper it should at least be clean
I thought it was part of my move in package when I bought a house. I figured I needed something to do before the furniture was brought over so I carried my laptop in and low and behold "linksys" and "linksys2" showed up as available networks.
;)
How nice, I have free Internet! I was happy to use their beaconing WLANs until I got my own connection (and because Charter sucks and Frontier wasn't much better I was lucky to have it).
Personally, I thought it was absolutely wonderful. It made my life a lot easier and because one is a Charter customer and ther other is a DSL customer I assume that if my DSL goes down at least I have the possibility of an Internet connection via Cable.
Redundancy is a good thing
The residential customers also cost them a lot of money to support, either directly or indirectly, so what is happening here is that de-centralizing the distribution of media and communications will require the cable companies and telcos to streamline their operations.
So what you are saying is that they make no money on their residential customers and they only promote the service out of the goodness of their hearts right? They have no interest in spreading their power across the country and buying up every little company out there to take under their wing right?
This is America and we work under the Capitalist system. If something isn't profitable it is either done away with completely or bought up by the government. Comcast wouldn't be buying up every cable company in the country to spread their influences if it wasn't profitable.
Believe me. The conglomorates will not appreciate losing customers to this sort of operation. Luckily for them they can control the content that these neighborhood groups can receive and at what cost.
Either way we'll lose.
At this point, intellectual property lawyers are supposed to start reaching for their telephones to call Canada, but it won't do any good because all this content is perfectly legal and here's how. With the exception of local channels, which come from an antenna, all of Andrew's video content comes from a C-band (big dish) satellite receiver (receivers, actually), and is fully paid for. "I buy the channels just like a cable system does or a motel that wants to offer HBO, from the National Programming Service," says Andrew. "And as a result I pay wholesale prices. People don't realize how much of a markup there in is the cable business. The Discovery Networks, for example, cost me $0.26 per customer per month. The IP laws in both the U.S. and Canada say that if I have legal access to this content I can store and use it. And the over-the-air channels, of course, are free."
.26/mo is possible why aren't more people doing it? Is it because it isn't as easy as Cringley makes it seem? This might be possible now but once entire neighborhoods across the nation (and world) start to do this it might not be quite as easy. Remember, the conglomerates control a lot of things including media channels. You think that they are going to put up with losing the revenue from their residential customers?
Hmm, I wish that everyone could have a large dish in their neighborhood. Hell I had to put up with a ton of shit at my apartment complex to get a small dish ($400 damage deposit -- $300 non-refundable, make sure it wasn't attached to anything, etc). I have to sign a waiver at my house because of the HOA. I thought the FCC mandated that having a small dish was legal and easy? I just can't see anyone having a large dish to bring this in at least in my area.
If getting this stuff for
But you cannot discount rap any longer. It truly comes from the grassroots and I think fits the intent of this article. Now the STATE of rap is questionable, but I don't think you can question its legitimacy and power.
I don't discount the "power" that rap holds in the music world. What I do discount is that it is still a rebellion against traditional music. They are just a different genre. They certainly aren't fighting "The Man".
Rap, for one, started as do-it-yourself music among lower-income black men from distressed urban neighborhoods, recorded by artists on inexpensive equipment and distributed on handmade tapes by local labels. Yet within two decades, rap has become the dominant popular music across the world. In league with Pro-Am music distribution made possible by Napster and Kazaa, it has turned the entire record industry on its head.
;)
And it has now become the same money-hungry scheme that the rest of music is. Silver teeth, 80 gram bling, expensive cars, big houses, "hoes", problems with the law, etc. I don't see the difference between rap stars and more "traditional" music. I give this one 0/100.
Likewise, according to one estimate, 90% of the content in The Sims is created by a Pro-Am sector of The Sims ' playing community, a distributed, self-organizing group whose players are constantly training one another and innovating.
I suppose you could say that's why it is successful. I honestly believe that Quake was so very successful because people could play it the way they wanted to but I still think that the original game had a lot to do with it. If the base gameplay isn't all that great why would people be interested in building on that? I give this one 50/100.
Some professionals will find that unsettling; they will seek to defend their monopolies. The more enlightened will understand that the landscape is changing. Knowledge is widely distributed, not controlled in a few ivory towers. The most powerful organizations will enable professionals and amateurs to combine distributed know-how to solve complex problems.
More importantly the corporations find this unsettling and they have the backing to make it financially impossible for the "amateurs" to compete.
Pro-Am activity will continue to expand. Longer healthy life spans will allow people in their forties and fifties to start taking up Pro-Am activities as second careers. Rising participation in education will give people skills to pursue those activities. New media and technology enable Pro-Ams to organize.
Perhaps it has to do more with intelligent people understanding that they don't appreciate what's going on in the coporate world and they realize that they can at least do a little bit to start change in motion. I am not saying that they will get very far before the corporations do what they can to make the "amateurs" lives miserable but at least it gets the ball rolling.
Pro-Ams could fuel mass participation in formal politics and in social entrepreneurship.
No they most certainly will not. Not unless these "amateurs" get the election process changed to a reality TV style format. People just don't care enough about politics and social entrepeneurship. They want to sit at home and drug their brains with TV. That's all they want out of life. House, two SUVs, a jetski, and 2.75 kids.
Plus, if amateurs were so great the flood of high quality home-made porno would be a ton better than what Vivid puts out. Personally, I'd rather watch the oversized men fuck women with over-sized Nip/Tuck'd boobs and airbrushed looking bodies than watching a fat, hairy, man fuck some underaged looking dark-circle eyed skank on the floor of a Super8 hotel room. That's me though
From the blurb:
Pro-Am workers, their networks and movements, will help reshape society in the next two decades.
Corporations, their money, and their slaves will continue to reshape society via their direct control over multiple media outlets (solidified TV/news, radio, Internet) not the public. Grass-roots campaigns have always existed on the fringe and while their causes are noble the masses love to be sheep while thinking they aren't.
The government wasted its best opportunity to avoid this result three years ago, when the incoming Bush Justice Department, in a stunning reversal, decided to drop its "tying" claim. Still, the road not taken -- pressing Microsoft to offer a neutral choice of Web browsers for use with Windows -- started to look a lot more appealing this summer, when Internet Explorer's security flaws made national headlines.
Well at least now the DOJ has a lot more pressing matters at hand... Like getting the recent ruling against the Patriot Act overturned so those evil fucking terrorists can't get away and those sneaky American citizens can't hide their financial records from them.
I always felt that if the government continued to pursue their case against MSFT they would only pay for it in higher licensing fees later. Choose your battles... Money from the terrorists and the citizens or money from MSFT?
Perhaps you're so surprised (or confused?) because you failed to actually read the article. This was a design of Dilbert's "dream" house, not the house he currently lives in. A subt hint would be the article title, "Dilbert's Ultimate House".
He lives in a world of B&W pencil. It seems just wrong to me for his ultimate house to be in anything but the same.
After reading through the stacks of Dilbert cartoon books in my college apartment's bathroom I was under the assumption that Dilbert's house looked something out of a third grader's art class.
Turns out I was completely wrong and it looks like something out of Art 453, The CGI of Star Wars and how it can be applied to comics.
I guess I preferred living in a world of Simpsons where I didn't have to mentally map out the entire episode based on a "fact" or look at Dilbert's house in anything except black and white pencil.
That's just me though.
You paid for a non-transferable, limited use license to run XP on the specific machine that you purchased. If you want a transferable license you can get one at Best Buy.
I paid for a piece of software that I should be able to use at my leisure. When someone ships a computer they shouldn't be tied down to what the vendor of the OS wants. They should be allowed to do what they want with what they got.
The consulting firm issued a report on Wednesday stating that about 40 percent of Linux PCs will be modified to run an illegal copy of Windows, a bait-and-switch maneuver that lowers the cost of obtaining a Windows PC.
I wasn't aware that PCs were made by Microsoft. I realize that B. Crew wants every PC to be sold with Windows and makes in very difficult for vendors to do anything but sell them that way, but I am pretty certain it isn't a requirement for Windows to be on every single PC out there.
As a result, the number of desktop Linux PCs that ship will exceed the actual percentage of Linux machines that get installed in the real world. Desktop Linux will account for about 5 percent of desktops shipped in 2004, according to Gartner, with 10.5 percent of the desktops in Asia shipping with Linux this year. However, the installed base of Linux will come to only 1.3 percent.
In 2008, Linux will account for 7.5 percent of PCs shipped, but only 2.6 percent of the installed base, about the same that Apple's installed base will be then.
Star News reports that by 2009 15.29% of the The National Enquirer's stories will be completely false and that their own stories will overtake FoxNews as the most truthful news source on the planet.
My last machine came with XP installed. I didn't even get to have a CD of XP other than the restore CD. The key on the back of the computer was invalid anyway and MSFT had no suggestions for me other than using a valid key... So, we have to buy a computer with Windows on it because MSFT won't be friendly with vendors that don't offer 100% Windows only. We get that computer with Windows but we really can't use the copy on any other machine and we don't get the install CD and it may not even have a working key. Yet we are supposed to believe that this is acceptable and poor MSFT will lose money to piracy.
I paid for my copy of Windows XP and I expect to get my use out of it whether it follows MSFT's rules or not. I would assume the same rings true elsewhere. Who the hell wants to pay 20%+ of their PC cost for Windows if they can't even use it?
Welcome to hell.