It's listed under "humor" for a reason. I don't bitch and moan about the "bush is a monkey" sites, so don't whine cause some group (accurately) pokes fun at the fact that Kerry does a crappy job pretending to be a sports fan.
The only part of the site that might truely sway voters is the "hunting" segment. Pretending to be a lifelong hunter w/ a gun voting record such as his is just wrong (almost as bad as exploiting Cheney's daughter).
(I've said this before and I'll say it again, even though IANAL)
Law ultimately comes down to "legality vs deviance." File sharing is extremely popular, reguardless of its legality. There are over 60 million file-sharers in the US alone. That means it's not really deviant, so doing it has no moral repercussions.
For example, my father haranged me for years (6 to be exact), about downloading music illegally. "You're breaking the law!! You're going to get sued!!." Last month he began downloading oldies off the net ("stuff you'll never find in the stores"). He does NOT believe he has done a single thing wrong. Something (in the course of the 3 months I was away) has convinced him that there is nothing wrong with grabbing some songs off the net. And my father is by far, the most pro-corporation, hard-core, right-wing Republican I know (except maybe my mother, who believes that every third party falls under the category "communism"(and yes, my own mother has called me a communist for supporting badnarik)).
The courts WILL take deviance into account when making decisions (too lazy to find extra sources for a late grandchild post). If violating the law isn't deviant, the court will lean towards striking it down (oral sex, anybody?).
And when it comes down to it... How do you show that a law is a bad law? Writing letters to your congressman? More often than not it yields a response which effectively says "It's nice you want to participate... but I stand by my opinion and yadayadayada" (I've done it for DMCA, Patriot, FCC, to 3 different PA representatives). The only way to make politicans listen is to vote against them. (and don't be fooled... your senators and representatives are FAR more important than the prez).
No, in orer to show your disapproval of the law, the most effective way is to break it. This is doubly true if you can think of a way to do it while gaining massive media coverage that mocks the law (like the RIAA suing granny).
Seriously, this person has worded the neccessity of the electoral college almost perfectly. (and I without mod points).
The electoral college prevents the big states (new york, california, and florida) from determining the agenda for the whole nation (and judging from current events...would you really want them to?.
The problem with that is that in order to disable said feature in the BIOS, you have to do it for each and every individual machine, and it would also prevent authorized users from transfering data from said devices.
The biggest benefit of this being an OS feature is that you can have (remote) user control. That way, the people who NEED external USB devices can use them.
Side note: Wasn't the majority of the/. crowd previously bashing MS for not allowing the user(admin) enough control over such policies? What a hypocritical bunch.
First off, I'd like to say I respect you for actually listing facts, and beginning a legitimate discussion. However, I personally feel those facts are taken a bit out of context. I've taken a few economics courses, so I am by no means an expert, so if there are any econ majors out there, please enlighten me. Also, it's kinda late (both in hours and in the discussion), so exact formulas , theories, or whatnot are not to be expected. Also, my points might be muddled a bit cause slashdot doesn't deserve much more than rough drafts.
I'd like to start off by refuting all your points in general because of a little macroeconomics concept called "implementation lag." Implementation lag basically says it takes time for economisists to find a problem, and for politicians to react to it. There is also "impact lag," which is how long it takes for the market to respond to new implementation. Tax cuts have longer lag and implementation times than say, lowering the interest rates.
Bush did not cause the recession. It was a combination of 9/11 (bad news almost always causes problems) and Clinton/Gore policies. Granted, he might not have made the best economic policy ever, but then again, I'm a firm believer in the private sector, and dislike relying on govt jobs. The job market isn't 100% bleak (90% of Penn State IST majors (University Park) got jobs avging 55k within 4 months of graduation), and if outsourcing is causing so many creative intellectuals to lose their jobs, maybe those intellectuals should find work for themselves.
These concepts apply to everything in politics, including everything to driving laws to inteligence failures.
Bush was in office all of 8 months when 9/11 happened. We have now had 3 years to scrutinize those 8 months, and hindsight is always 20/20. I personally believe that intelligence falures did occur, and Bush is not the one to blame. It is unlikely Bush would have seen anything wrong with the system, since that's how he inherited it from the last president. If you want to blame intelligence/security breaches, blame Clinton for shrinking intelligence budgets and not reacting sternly to international crises.
Everything else...eh, I can't refute that now (other to sling some mud and say that neither side is gonna do jack squat about it), so I won't.
I apologize for the lies segment. I'll admit an oversight on my part. I was trolling, and I see that now. To make up for it, I will present what little logic I can form while mildly hung over. (The error is consistent across multiple sites, so it's likely whats-her-face fucked up, not them)
6 Grand is a lot, but not much from a CEO of a company. I give 500 to the GOP every year. I earn less than 40 grand, so 6 grand is not an unreasonable level of a personal contribution from an exec earning 5, 10 times what I make.
Second, check some other sites for campain donations.
Open Secrets.org has a detailed comparison of many actual company donations. It also has stats to show which party many organizations fall partial to. (an ironic sidenote: even though slashdot typically hates the RIAA/MPAA, and the general political preference is democrat, the RIAA/MPAA give more money to dems than republicans. A LOT more)
Almost any company is biased one way or another (wheter or not they actually donate money). So the only logical solution i can see is either open-source the app or have the NSA do it. But we don't all trust the NSA do we?
WHOA right there buddy. First of all, you spelled TECHNOLOGY wrong. So I was not surprised when I got a "no results found" when I went to your "reference."
So I corrected the spelling... Still no result. http://www.campaignmoney.com/finance.asp? type=io&c ycle=04&criteria=OMEGA+TECHNOLOGIES+INC
And try searching these variations: OMEGA OMEGA TECH OMEGA TECHNOLOGIES INC OMEGA TECHNOLOGIES
The only result that turned up anything was "OMEGA TECNOLOGIES," even though the search blatantly says "(enter any part of the employer name or occupation)."
So I smell a rat... Or at least a poorly written database. Anyone find REAL info?
Is the new theme really that ugly? I find it to be a clean, basic design, which is ideal for a "default" theme. Quit bashing a half-decent looking theme and install a new one if you hate it that much (I personally hated all the previous default themes, but am probably gonna keep this one).
I'm one of those idiots that forgot to uninstall the old FF and am getting quirky errors thanks to the profile import. While stored passwords/forms/setting changed over fine, extensions is broken horribly. Haven't tried themes (since I LIKE the default).
One thing that is irking me: where are the proxy settings now? Before they were quite obvious... but I can't find them for the life of me.
I generally agree on the whole "simplify settings" thing, but the last tab should read "expert" or something and include lots of that "real" advanced settings (w/ plain english descriptions) too "complicated" for the other users.
Semi-offtopic: How many freaking dupes of this article do we need? Furthermore, how hard would it be to have a filter that scans all articles posted in the last week and flags new "about to be posted" articles as dupes if they have more than X number of matching words.
I'm coming close to perfecting the windows install. It's not perfect yet, but it's close. I believe it depends greatly on the order you install stuff, as almost everything you install will screw with your registry. This is a bit more than 10 programs, but will guide you to an extremely stable windows install.
Here goes:
"The core" 1. Windows Updates, all the criticals, and most of the optionals 2. DX9 (if not one of the win updates) and update all drivers, esp vid card. 2. Visual Studio.NET and updates 3. Microsoft Office and updates 4. Tweak UI and/or reg hacks 5. Defrag 2x to consolidate all of these files together at the beginning of the HD
Those three are the most essential to do first. I'm almost certain Microsoft makes core changes in the operating system and adds many system files while doing so. As such, the rest of the programs don't matter nearly as much to core system stability.
"The services" 6. Apache/PHP/MySQL 7. FTP server (Filezilla) 8. Anti-virus (Symantc...anything but McAffee) 9. Ad-aware and/or Spybot S&D 10. Defrag 2x
"The essentials" 11. Alternative browser (Firefox) 12. Alternative mail (Thunderbird) 13. Archive program (7-zip) 14. Chat client (Gaim) 15. FTP client (Filezilla) 16. P2P apps (WinMX) 17. Bit torrent app (Azureus) 18. Media Player (Winamp 5.x) 19. CD ripper (CDDA Ripper XP) 20. Codec Pack (KL codec pack v 2.25f) 21. Adobe Acrobat Reader 22. Defrag 2x 23. Run BootVis.exe a few times to optimize boot time
That should give you an extremely stable Windows install. After you do this much, I would reccomend finding a way to image this, to make your future installs easier. After this, install all the other programs (games, tools, etc). Then run your virus scanner and adaware and you've got a stable windows machine for at least 4 months.
I would have never become a gamer if it wasn't for piracy. I would be totally out of the market. The grand total of ~$150 I've thrown towards game companies would be non-existant. I would probably be doing stupid stuff like watching tv.
Furthurmore: 1. Reviewers lie (esp movies, but games too) 2. There are not always demos 3. Demos usually suck in comparison to the full game, so they don't provide a valid basis for comparison 4. Piracy generates revenue due to name recognition (yes, it hurts the little guys, but I've noticed most of the little guys suck. And that's after playing legitimate demos)
Games I bought: UT2004 (Demo off bit torrent) Star Wars Galaxies (before trials came out...boy I regret this one) Starcraft and Broodwar (pirated) Neverwinter Nights and expansions (pirated)
Of those 4 games, only 2 of them currently reiside on my HD; Starcraft, and UT2004. UT2004 is new. Starcraft is the only one that withstood the test of time. And I probably wouldn't even have that if I hadn't pirated it in high school. And if I didn't copy the original broodwar ISO to my HD years ago, I would be SOL because I've gone through about 4 Broodwar discs between LANs, bad luck, and a crappy CD drives. And I'm tempted to crack UT2004, to preserve the DVD until I can make a legit backup.
Crack down on piracy? Sure. I'll be perfectly happy with my legit copy of Starcraft. I won't have to toss another dime towards game companies (which I intend to do once I make more than $5000/yr)
Heh, you obviously havn't played starcraft for too long:)
They've had SST maps for years that embody what a good SST game would be: Fast, Fun, and Lots and LOTS of killing.
That being said, yea, I would want a good SST game. Especially since there are SOOO many ways the story can be taken (and that's just from the guy who watched the movie).
I would like to see a MMO FPS/Hack&Slash. People playing as the troopers (low HP, but good weapons) would be FPS, while people playing bugs (high HP, but pretty much only melee attacks) could play from a third person perspective, ala PoP: Sands of Time.
Yea, that would rule. Of course, it probably does sound better in my head than it does here.
Agreed. In fact, giving the voice actors more money will probably result in more charitable donations than giving it back to execs.
Voice actors deserve a large cut, because they MAKE the show happen. Writers can only do so much to make a hit show. You need good voice actors to give the scripts life. The same outlook can be applied to regular movies: you could have the greatest plot in the world, but if your actors suck, your movie will suck.
Ahh, the silly AC from another country... always confusing the american social system. I know I'm feeding a troll, but I can't help it.
1 - Buy a gun Yes... buy a gun. I've never killed anyone. Neither have my parents, or my siblings, or my friends. However, hunting deer is quite fun, and they taste delicious (and if you don't shoot them, they turn into hood ornaments). Note: this is a Rebulican stance
2 - Put on at least 25 stone I know most of my community is not overweight. Just because some fatasses won't take responsibility for their weight problems doesn't mean you should accuse me of it. I'm 6'3", and 5 lbs underweight. I doubt you're starving yourself cause you feel bad about poor people... you're spending most of your day trolling about how America sucks. (Pushing off responsibility for personal actions, IE weight control...tends to be supported by Democrats)
3 - Learn the lingo And I'll bet you don't have any local dialect at all. I'm sure you've never slacked off on your 100% perfect grammer. Shove it. (Oh, and I know many other insults to complement asswipe: cockgobbler, smacktard, dickweed, pussyface, fuckwad, dumbass, and ignoramus....all of which describe you to a fairly accurate degree)
4 - Throw away all maps, history books etc. Don't know about most other Americans, but I somehow managed to pass 6th grade, and I learned where most of the countries are, at least what continent they're on. And I'm sure your life has been greatly improved by knowing when the Shang Dynasty took control of China. You keep up that good studying... I'll learn more about evil dictators slaughtering their own people for personal gain.
5 - Become totally irrational and nonsensical Aye, it seems that your post here has already violated that... you've been able to muddle a bunch of stereotypes that don't even apply to a large portion of America. At least... no less than they can be applied in other places as well. And remember... before you diss free speech... we invented it (or at least stole it from the Romans/Greeks...that's a little fuzzy). Without it... your sorry ass would have gotten his head chopped off long ago.
6 - Sue everyone you ever meet Yea, lawsuits are a problem in this country. I'll give you that. But then, lawsuits like that tend to be propagated in areas of highly Democratic voters. You do the math. (Oh, and you're confusing the opposite ideals of Dems and Republicans again) Apparently, in your mind... two types of people with opposite views are in fact exactly the same.
7 - Get a "shrink" WTF?? I don't know anyone who sees a shrink. But if they did, I would assume they're a Democrat who can't deal w/ their "feelings". (Sorry, I have a tendancy to diss Democrats on a regular basis) Again, you seem to think that 1/2 of America = all of America.
8 - Watch abysmal TV Yea... Cause the French release soooo many masterpieces. And what loser watches Friends? I'd rather be out with my gun killing helpless animals that would rather be out smashing my car to bits. And posting trolls on slashdot is SOOOO much more productive than watching a few stand-up comedians on Comedy Central.
Seems that you have posed as a bigger moron than most of my friends. And I hope you you're hungry, you silly troll, cause I'm sure there's a lot more people out there ready to feed you.
Thank you:) I am too incompetant(heck, just look at my wonderful spelling) to find things like this, and I did not intend to personally offend you, and am fully aware that seeming useless, stupid projects yield much in the way of learning (hell, just look at my crappy website; the byproduct of my desire to learn PHP).
And as far as twisted humor is concerned; I'm always looking for nifty things to do to my friends PC's, and since most of them use IE, this kind of humor is lost on them. They're subject to the much more cruel "If you didn't use IE for your default browser, I wouldn't have been able to give you that legion of spyware".
You've fixed my greatest (practically only) gripe with Firefox, so in my eyes, you've just earned status as demi-god.
Who needs this? A waste of resources if you ask me (aside from the clever "Internet Explorer" refs above.
What I need is a plugin that eliminates that annoying "All downloads completed" alerter. God I hate that thing.
If there is already one out there, please enlighten this ignorant soul. If not, stop wasting your time writing name-changing plugins and do something useful.
Over the summer I was doing some factory labor for extra cash. The factory was owned by Miltex, a German dental company. Everything that I was making was getting shipped right to Germany. Even the labels for the stuff was in German.
Makes sense though... IIRC labor laws in the US aren't nearly as restrictive as in Germany. As such, even if they're not saving as much as say... using child labor in India or China, it's still cheaper than hiring Germans.
What is free speech? I live in a democracy that allows me, should I so wish, to *campaign* for the legalisation for necrophilia.
See, there is your problem (coming from a US citizen)... Your government is based on the government having ultimate power, and as such, rights are granted to you by the government. US law is structured such that the ultimate rights are with the people, and the government gets it's rights from the people, not the other way around.
Granted, this is more of a philosophical ideal, but the fact remains... If the majority of the people stood up in protest of the government, the government must bend (yea, that's also part of the reason 2nd amendment is important).
Don't believe me? Lets see...I'm running a website that has (jokingly) advocated screwing dead hookers, eating aborted fetuses, and killing off pop stars (oh what a grand world it would be). Worst I can get is a slap on the wrist by my ISP saying "no... we won't let you host that". So I can still host it elsewhere... and there's jack shit the US can legally do about it. If I were in the UK, odds are I'd be doing jailtime right now (even though most of the offensive writings are not written by me).
You don't have freedom of speech. You are legally allowed to petition the government. And the government can take that away from you.
If I build a mouse (click click, not squeak squeak) that just happens to be the most responsive, comfortable mouse on the market... Does that mean I invented the mouse?
BMW makes very nice cars... Does that mean they invented "very nice cars"? No, of course not.
Maybe if I had something truely original and revolutionary in the new design, I could claim to have invented that part of it. But just because you came up w/ a better version of what's already out.
Nitpicking I know, but I get peeved when people say Edison invented the light bulb.
Besides, I never considered Time to be a good source of judging ANYTHING. There's better stuff out there.
Now we just have to work on that 650 MB ul limit in the dorms... and the whole 10 base connection thing... the whole Math Emporium thing... and the god damn instructors!!!
You would think that since they can afford this awesome spectacle of computing (and this is from a Mac hater), they'd be able to hire some teachers that can speak freaking English. Out of my 5 classes right now, only 3 instructors speak English as a first language(and two of those instructors are teaching 1 class). I've got Slawny for physics (think Milton from office space, except add a heavy russian accent, and mumbles even more), some indian TA for vector geometry (not bad english, but can't teach worth shit), and a chinese guy for Differential Equations (can't remember his name, but he talks so damn fast).
All that other crap... You would think a tech school would be more open to letting me run a couple (ok, lots) of servers. Or at least fragging at 100 base. And the Math Emporium, for those too lazy to click on the link, is one of the largest Mac labs in the world. Why does it suck you ask? Because a fair number have that crappy round ball mouse w/ 1 button, the rest have the crappy 1 button optical, the way they have OS X configured, when you load safari, the window size is about triple the resolution,
But yea, our football team ROCKS! As I recall, the lasf few games were landslide victories, to say the least.
Please be polite, because that's the only way they'll take you seriously. If they don't realize that some hardcore republicans (such as myself) will vote for the other guy if they keep proposing crap like this.
Let's drop Pitts a good old-fashioned mail-bomb, letting him know how the public feels. Also, you can find your way to this place and contact your representative, telling them that ratifying this might be a 'bad thing'
Your argument is very reasonable.. But you're taking the speeding analogy to the extreme. Traffic tends to move at about 5 MPH over the speed limit, which is technically illegal, even though nobody seems to think this is wrong. This mild speeding isn't deviant. It's when someone is driving 10+ over that it becomes deviant. And as such, I agree that more severe punishments are in order for excessive speeders.
I don't think that getting 10-20 years for speeding is reasonable. People who KILL people have gotten off with less. The American justice system is severly screwed up. The punishments for mild crimes tend to be too severe, while punishments for things like murder are too leinient. Prision for life isn't a reasonable punishment for someone who strangles 5 babies. A person who does that is a threat to society, and society shouldn't fund him to live (even if it is in a living hell). Let god decide his fate when we let him hang. (and yes, I believe people deserve punishments in proportion to their crimes. Getting strangled to death is a perfectly fitting crime for someone who strangles helpless children)
For a quick lesson in socialogy, legality is whether the law has determined something to be wrong. Deviance is whether or not it is against societal norms.
Speeding is and example of something that is NOT deviant, but is illegal. EVERYONE speeds, if only a little bit, despite that the law says you arn't supposed to. When a situation like this arises, usually the law is repealed, the punishment is slack, or there is leeway when enforcing the law. That is why cops tend to be lenient with speeding tickets. Cops will let you get away with 5-10 MPH over, while someone who is doing 35+ over will almost certainly come down hard. Prohibition in the 20's is another example, except in this case, the laws were repealed. (there are probably more recent examples, but IANAL, or a socialogist, so I havn't done much research)
This survey shows that amoung (american) internet users, file-sharing(downloading) isn't deviant, despite it's illegality. I'm going out on a limb here, but I'd say in most of the world, file-sharing isn't illegal, and it certainly isn't deviant. Even if laws are passes to severly punish the users, the judiciary system will almost certainly strike them down if the behavior is relativly harmless (nobody is getting killed), and it isn't deviant.
Legality means nothing to me. I'm not going to switch to a pay service unless it can provide things that Kazaa can't. High quality, full albums, with no DRM. If I can't send copies of songs to my friends over IM, it's worthless in my book.
Also, if it became a 'fee', all hell would break loose. Colleges already charge a crapload for extra stuff lots of people never use, just on the assumption that you "might" use it.
Examples: (per semester at Virginia Tech) Student activity fee: $113 (most student activities suck) Athletic fee: $116 (gym crowded, and don't have to attend gym to excercise) Rec Sports Fee: $71 (the funny thing is most people who actually do rec sports have to buy their own gear as well) Bus fee: $30 (I use it, but many others don't)
Pay each of those twice a year and that's $660. I don't even want to think about what the "music fee" would be.
Slashdot Mirror
God, you liberal freaks here need to lighten up.
It's listed under "humor" for a reason. I don't bitch and moan about the "bush is a monkey" sites, so don't whine cause some group (accurately) pokes fun at the fact that Kerry does a crappy job pretending to be a sports fan.
The only part of the site that might truely sway voters is the "hunting" segment. Pretending to be a lifelong hunter w/ a gun voting record such as his is just wrong (almost as bad as exploiting Cheney's daughter).
More file swappers in the US than voted for either Bush or Gore in 2000
(I've said this before and I'll say it again, even though IANAL)
Law ultimately comes down to "legality vs deviance." File sharing is extremely popular, reguardless of its legality. There are over 60 million file-sharers in the US alone. That means it's not really deviant, so doing it has no moral repercussions.
For example, my father haranged me for years (6 to be exact), about downloading music illegally. "You're breaking the law!! You're going to get sued!!." Last month he began downloading oldies off the net ("stuff you'll never find in the stores"). He does NOT believe he has done a single thing wrong. Something (in the course of the 3 months I was away) has convinced him that there is nothing wrong with grabbing some songs off the net. And my father is by far, the most pro-corporation, hard-core, right-wing Republican I know (except maybe my mother, who believes that every third party falls under the category "communism"(and yes, my own mother has called me a communist for supporting badnarik)).
The courts WILL take deviance into account when making decisions (too lazy to find extra sources for a late grandchild post). If violating the law isn't deviant, the court will lean towards striking it down (oral sex, anybody?).
And when it comes down to it... How do you show that a law is a bad law? Writing letters to your congressman? More often than not it yields a response which effectively says "It's nice you want to participate... but I stand by my opinion and yadayadayada" (I've done it for DMCA, Patriot, FCC, to 3 different PA representatives). The only way to make politicans listen is to vote against them. (and don't be fooled... your senators and representatives are FAR more important than the prez).
No, in orer to show your disapproval of the law, the most effective way is to break it. This is doubly true if you can think of a way to do it while gaining massive media coverage that mocks the law (like the RIAA suing granny).
Yea...cause...you know... MTV has always been the pinnacle positive influence on young people...
Remind me again who is (at least partially) responsible for pushing 2/3 of the bad music today?
http://www.youhavebadtasteinmusic.com/
Obviously enough to moderate it +5 funny :)
MOD PARENT UP!!
Seriously, this person has worded the neccessity of the electoral college almost perfectly. (and I without mod points).
The electoral college prevents the big states (new york, california, and florida) from determining the agenda for the whole nation (and judging from current events...would you really want them to?.
Thank you Mr.kfx...for enlightening the masses
The problem with that is that in order to disable said feature in the BIOS, you have to do it for each and every individual machine, and it would also prevent authorized users from transfering data from said devices.
/. crowd previously bashing MS for not allowing the user(admin) enough control over such policies? What a hypocritical bunch.
The biggest benefit of this being an OS feature is that you can have (remote) user control. That way, the people who NEED external USB devices can use them.
Side note: Wasn't the majority of the
First off, I'd like to say I respect you for actually listing facts, and beginning a legitimate discussion. However, I personally feel those facts are taken a bit out of context. I've taken a few economics courses, so I am by no means an expert, so if there are any econ majors out there, please enlighten me. Also, it's kinda late (both in hours and in the discussion), so exact formulas , theories, or whatnot are not to be expected. Also, my points might be muddled a bit cause slashdot doesn't deserve much more than rough drafts.
I'd like to start off by refuting all your points in general because of a little macroeconomics concept called "implementation lag." Implementation lag basically says it takes time for economisists to find a problem, and for politicians to react to it. There is also "impact lag," which is how long it takes for the market to respond to new implementation. Tax cuts have longer lag and implementation times than say, lowering the interest rates.
Bush did not cause the recession. It was a combination of 9/11 (bad news almost always causes problems) and Clinton/Gore policies. Granted, he might not have made the best economic policy ever, but then again, I'm a firm believer in the private sector, and dislike relying on govt jobs. The job market isn't 100% bleak (90% of Penn State IST majors (University Park) got jobs avging 55k within 4 months of graduation), and if outsourcing is causing so many creative intellectuals to lose their jobs, maybe those intellectuals should find work for themselves.
These concepts apply to everything in politics, including everything to driving laws to inteligence failures.
Bush was in office all of 8 months when 9/11 happened. We have now had 3 years to scrutinize those 8 months, and hindsight is always 20/20. I personally believe that intelligence falures did occur, and Bush is not the one to blame. It is unlikely Bush would have seen anything wrong with the system, since that's how he inherited it from the last president. If you want to blame intelligence/security breaches, blame Clinton for shrinking intelligence budgets and not reacting sternly to international crises.
Everything else...eh, I can't refute that now (other to sling some mud and say that neither side is gonna do jack squat about it), so I won't.
I apologize for the lies segment. I'll admit an oversight on my part. I was trolling, and I see that now. To make up for it, I will present what little logic I can form while mildly hung over. (The error is consistent across multiple sites, so it's likely whats-her-face fucked up, not them)
6 Grand is a lot, but not much from a CEO of a company. I give 500 to the GOP every year. I earn less than 40 grand, so 6 grand is not an unreasonable level of a personal contribution from an exec earning 5, 10 times what I make.
Second, check some other sites for campain donations.
Open Secrets.org has a detailed comparison of many actual company donations. It also has stats to show which party many organizations fall partial to. (an ironic sidenote: even though slashdot typically hates the RIAA/MPAA, and the general political preference is democrat, the RIAA/MPAA give more money to dems than republicans. A LOT more)
Almost any company is biased one way or another (wheter or not they actually donate money). So the only logical solution i can see is either open-source the app or have the NSA do it. But we don't all trust the NSA do we?
WHOA right there buddy. First of all, you spelled TECHNOLOGY wrong. So I was not surprised when I got a "no results found" when I went to your "reference."
? type=io&c ycle=04&criteria=OMEGA+TECHNOLOGIES+INC
So I corrected the spelling... Still no result.
http://www.campaignmoney.com/finance.asp
And try searching these variations:
OMEGA
OMEGA TECH
OMEGA TECHNOLOGIES INC
OMEGA TECHNOLOGIES
The only result that turned up anything was "OMEGA TECNOLOGIES," even though the search blatantly says "(enter any part of the employer name or occupation)."
So I smell a rat... Or at least a poorly written database. Anyone find REAL info?
Is the new theme really that ugly? I find it to be a clean, basic design, which is ideal for a "default" theme. Quit bashing a half-decent looking theme and install a new one if you hate it that much (I personally hated all the previous default themes, but am probably gonna keep this one).
I'm one of those idiots that forgot to uninstall the old FF and am getting quirky errors thanks to the profile import. While stored passwords/forms/setting changed over fine, extensions is broken horribly. Haven't tried themes (since I LIKE the default).
One thing that is irking me: where are the proxy settings now? Before they were quite obvious... but I can't find them for the life of me.
I generally agree on the whole "simplify settings" thing, but the last tab should read "expert" or something and include lots of that "real" advanced settings (w/ plain english descriptions) too "complicated" for the other users.
Semi-offtopic: How many freaking dupes of this article do we need? Furthermore, how hard would it be to have a filter that scans all articles posted in the last week and flags new "about to be posted" articles as dupes if they have more than X number of matching words.
I'm coming close to perfecting the windows install. It's not perfect yet, but it's close. I believe it depends greatly on the order you install stuff, as almost everything you install will screw with your registry. This is a bit more than 10 programs, but will guide you to an extremely stable windows install.
.NET and updates
Here goes:
"The core"
1. Windows Updates, all the criticals, and most of the optionals
2. DX9 (if not one of the win updates) and update all drivers, esp vid card.
2. Visual Studio
3. Microsoft Office and updates
4. Tweak UI and/or reg hacks
5. Defrag 2x to consolidate all of these files together at the beginning of the HD
Those three are the most essential to do first. I'm almost certain Microsoft makes core changes in the operating system and adds many system files while doing so. As such, the rest of the programs don't matter nearly as much to core system stability.
"The services"
6. Apache/PHP/MySQL
7. FTP server (Filezilla)
8. Anti-virus (Symantc...anything but McAffee)
9. Ad-aware and/or Spybot S&D
10. Defrag 2x
"The essentials"
11. Alternative browser (Firefox)
12. Alternative mail (Thunderbird)
13. Archive program (7-zip)
14. Chat client (Gaim)
15. FTP client (Filezilla)
16. P2P apps (WinMX)
17. Bit torrent app (Azureus)
18. Media Player (Winamp 5.x)
19. CD ripper (CDDA Ripper XP)
20. Codec Pack (KL codec pack v 2.25f)
21. Adobe Acrobat Reader
22. Defrag 2x
23. Run BootVis.exe a few times to optimize boot time
That should give you an extremely stable Windows install. After you do this much, I would reccomend finding a way to image this, to make your future installs easier. After this, install all the other programs (games, tools, etc). Then run your virus scanner and adaware and you've got a stable windows machine for at least 4 months.
I would have never become a gamer if it wasn't for piracy. I would be totally out of the market. The grand total of ~$150 I've thrown towards game companies would be non-existant. I would probably be doing stupid stuff like watching tv.
Furthurmore:
1. Reviewers lie (esp movies, but games too)
2. There are not always demos
3. Demos usually suck in comparison to the full game, so they don't provide a valid basis for comparison
4. Piracy generates revenue due to name recognition (yes, it hurts the little guys, but I've noticed most of the little guys suck. And that's after playing legitimate demos)
Games I bought:
UT2004 (Demo off bit torrent)
Star Wars Galaxies (before trials came out...boy I regret this one)
Starcraft and Broodwar (pirated)
Neverwinter Nights and expansions (pirated)
Of those 4 games, only 2 of them currently reiside on my HD; Starcraft, and UT2004. UT2004 is new. Starcraft is the only one that withstood the test of time. And I probably wouldn't even have that if I hadn't pirated it in high school. And if I didn't copy the original broodwar ISO to my HD years ago, I would be SOL because I've gone through about 4 Broodwar discs between LANs, bad luck, and a crappy CD drives. And I'm tempted to crack UT2004, to preserve the DVD until I can make a legit backup.
Crack down on piracy? Sure. I'll be perfectly happy with my legit copy of Starcraft. I won't have to toss another dime towards game companies (which I intend to do once I make more than $5000/yr)
Heh, you obviously havn't played starcraft for too long :)
They've had SST maps for years that embody what a good SST game would be: Fast, Fun, and Lots and LOTS of killing.
That being said, yea, I would want a good SST game. Especially since there are SOOO many ways the story can be taken (and that's just from the guy who watched the movie).
I would like to see a MMO FPS/Hack&Slash. People playing as the troopers (low HP, but good weapons) would be FPS, while people playing bugs (high HP, but pretty much only melee attacks) could play from a third person perspective, ala PoP: Sands of Time.
Yea, that would rule. Of course, it probably does sound better in my head than it does here.
Agreed. In fact, giving the voice actors more money will probably result in more charitable donations than giving it back to execs.
Voice actors deserve a large cut, because they MAKE the show happen. Writers can only do so much to make a hit show. You need good voice actors to give the scripts life. The same outlook can be applied to regular movies: you could have the greatest plot in the world, but if your actors suck, your movie will suck.
Ahh, the silly AC from another country... always confusing the american social system. I know I'm feeding a troll, but I can't help it.
1 - Buy a gun
Yes... buy a gun. I've never killed anyone. Neither have my parents, or my siblings, or my friends. However, hunting deer is quite fun, and they taste delicious (and if you don't shoot them, they turn into hood ornaments). Note: this is a Rebulican stance
2 - Put on at least 25 stone
I know most of my community is not overweight. Just because some fatasses won't take responsibility for their weight problems doesn't mean you should accuse me of it. I'm 6'3", and 5 lbs underweight. I doubt you're starving yourself cause you feel bad about poor people... you're spending most of your day trolling about how America sucks. (Pushing off responsibility for personal actions, IE weight control...tends to be supported by Democrats)
3 - Learn the lingo
And I'll bet you don't have any local dialect at all. I'm sure you've never slacked off on your 100% perfect grammer. Shove it. (Oh, and I know many other insults to complement asswipe: cockgobbler, smacktard, dickweed, pussyface, fuckwad, dumbass, and ignoramus....all of which describe you to a fairly accurate degree)
4 - Throw away all maps, history books etc.
Don't know about most other Americans, but I somehow managed to pass 6th grade, and I learned where most of the countries are, at least what continent they're on. And I'm sure your life has been greatly improved by knowing when the Shang Dynasty took control of China. You keep up that good studying... I'll learn more about evil dictators slaughtering their own people for personal gain.
5 - Become totally irrational and nonsensical
Aye, it seems that your post here has already violated that... you've been able to muddle a bunch of stereotypes that don't even apply to a large portion of America. At least... no less than they can be applied in other places as well. And remember... before you diss free speech... we invented it (or at least stole it from the Romans/Greeks...that's a little fuzzy). Without it... your sorry ass would have gotten his head chopped off long ago.
6 - Sue everyone you ever meet
Yea, lawsuits are a problem in this country. I'll give you that. But then, lawsuits like that tend to be propagated in areas of highly Democratic voters. You do the math. (Oh, and you're confusing the opposite ideals of Dems and Republicans again) Apparently, in your mind... two types of people with opposite views are in fact exactly the same.
7 - Get a "shrink"
WTF?? I don't know anyone who sees a shrink. But if they did, I would assume they're a Democrat who can't deal w/ their "feelings". (Sorry, I have a tendancy to diss Democrats on a regular basis) Again, you seem to think that 1/2 of America = all of America.
8 - Watch abysmal TV
Yea... Cause the French release soooo many masterpieces. And what loser watches Friends? I'd rather be out with my gun killing helpless animals that would rather be out smashing my car to bits. And posting trolls on slashdot is SOOOO much more productive than watching a few stand-up comedians on Comedy Central.
Seems that you have posed as a bigger moron than most of my friends. And I hope you you're hungry, you silly troll, cause I'm sure there's a lot more people out there ready to feed you.
Thank you :) I am too incompetant(heck, just look at my wonderful spelling) to find things like this, and I did not intend to personally offend you, and am fully aware that seeming useless, stupid projects yield much in the way of learning (hell, just look at my crappy website; the byproduct of my desire to learn PHP).
And as far as twisted humor is concerned; I'm always looking for nifty things to do to my friends PC's, and since most of them use IE, this kind of humor is lost on them. They're subject to the much more cruel "If you didn't use IE for your default browser, I wouldn't have been able to give you that legion of spyware".
You've fixed my greatest (practically only) gripe with Firefox, so in my eyes, you've just earned status as demi-god.
Keep up the good work.
Who needs this? A waste of resources if you ask me (aside from the clever "Internet Explorer" refs above.
What I need is a plugin that eliminates that annoying "All downloads completed" alerter. God I hate that thing.
If there is already one out there, please enlighten this ignorant soul. If not, stop wasting your time writing name-changing plugins and do something useful.
Ironically... they already do...
Over the summer I was doing some factory labor for extra cash. The factory was owned by Miltex, a German dental company. Everything that I was making was getting shipped right to Germany. Even the labels for the stuff was in German.
Makes sense though... IIRC labor laws in the US aren't nearly as restrictive as in Germany. As such, even if they're not saving as much as say... using child labor in India or China, it's still cheaper than hiring Germans.
See, there is your problem (coming from a US citizen)... Your government is based on the government having ultimate power, and as such, rights are granted to you by the government. US law is structured such that the ultimate rights are with the people, and the government gets it's rights from the people, not the other way around.
Granted, this is more of a philosophical ideal, but the fact remains... If the majority of the people stood up in protest of the government, the government must bend (yea, that's also part of the reason 2nd amendment is important).
Don't believe me? Lets see...I'm running a website that has (jokingly) advocated screwing dead hookers, eating aborted fetuses, and killing off pop stars (oh what a grand world it would be). Worst I can get is a slap on the wrist by my ISP saying "no... we won't let you host that". So I can still host it elsewhere... and there's jack shit the US can legally do about it. If I were in the UK, odds are I'd be doing jailtime right now (even though most of the offensive writings are not written by me).
You don't have freedom of speech. You are legally allowed to petition the government. And the government can take that away from you.
So what this is saying is...
If I build a mouse (click click, not squeak squeak) that just happens to be the most responsive, comfortable mouse on the market... Does that mean I invented the mouse?
BMW makes very nice cars... Does that mean they invented "very nice cars"? No, of course not.
Maybe if I had something truely original and revolutionary in the new design, I could claim to have invented that part of it. But just because you came up w/ a better version of what's already out.
Nitpicking I know, but I get peeved when people say Edison invented the light bulb.
Besides, I never considered Time to be a good source of judging ANYTHING. There's better stuff out there.
I would... But i have no mod points :)
Yea, great supercomputer and all...
Now we just have to work on that 650 MB ul limit in the dorms... and the whole 10 base connection thing... the whole Math Emporium thing... and the god damn instructors!!!
You would think that since they can afford this awesome spectacle of computing (and this is from a Mac hater), they'd be able to hire some teachers that can speak freaking English. Out of my 5 classes right now, only 3 instructors speak English as a first language(and two of those instructors are teaching 1 class). I've got Slawny for physics (think Milton from office space, except add a heavy russian accent, and mumbles even more), some indian TA for vector geometry (not bad english, but can't teach worth shit), and a chinese guy for Differential Equations (can't remember his name, but he talks so damn fast).
All that other crap... You would think a tech school would be more open to letting me run a couple (ok, lots) of servers. Or at least fragging at 100 base. And the Math Emporium, for those too lazy to click on the link, is one of the largest Mac labs in the world. Why does it suck you ask? Because a fair number have that crappy round ball mouse w/ 1 button, the rest have the crappy 1 button optical, the way they have OS X configured, when you load safari, the window size is about triple the resolution,
But yea, our football team ROCKS! As I recall, the lasf few games were landslide victories, to say the least.
I think I've found a couple of link's you'll find interesting...
The nice congressmen that introduced this bill have public contact info:
For Joseph R. Pitts (anyone)
For Christopher John (only ppl in his district)
Please be polite, because that's the only way they'll take you seriously. If they don't realize that some hardcore republicans (such as myself) will vote for the other guy if they keep proposing crap like this.
Let's drop Pitts a good old-fashioned mail-bomb, letting him know how the public feels. Also, you can find your way to this place and contact your representative, telling them that ratifying this might be a 'bad thing'
Your argument is very reasonable.. But you're taking the speeding analogy to the extreme. Traffic tends to move at about 5 MPH over the speed limit, which is technically illegal, even though nobody seems to think this is wrong. This mild speeding isn't deviant. It's when someone is driving 10+ over that it becomes deviant. And as such, I agree that more severe punishments are in order for excessive speeders.
I don't think that getting 10-20 years for speeding is reasonable. People who KILL people have gotten off with less. The American justice system is severly screwed up. The punishments for mild crimes tend to be too severe, while punishments for things like murder are too leinient. Prision for life isn't a reasonable punishment for someone who strangles 5 babies. A person who does that is a threat to society, and society shouldn't fund him to live (even if it is in a living hell). Let god decide his fate when we let him hang. (and yes, I believe people deserve punishments in proportion to their crimes. Getting strangled to death is a perfectly fitting crime for someone who strangles helpless children)
Is that it exemplifies 'legality' and 'deviance'.
For a quick lesson in socialogy, legality is whether the law has determined something to be wrong. Deviance is whether or not it is against societal norms.
Speeding is and example of something that is NOT deviant, but is illegal. EVERYONE speeds, if only a little bit, despite that the law says you arn't supposed to. When a situation like this arises, usually the law is repealed, the punishment is slack, or there is leeway when enforcing the law. That is why cops tend to be lenient with speeding tickets. Cops will let you get away with 5-10 MPH over, while someone who is doing 35+ over will almost certainly come down hard. Prohibition in the 20's is another example, except in this case, the laws were repealed. (there are probably more recent examples, but IANAL, or a socialogist, so I havn't done much research)
This survey shows that amoung (american) internet users, file-sharing(downloading) isn't deviant, despite it's illegality. I'm going out on a limb here, but I'd say in most of the world, file-sharing isn't illegal, and it certainly isn't deviant. Even if laws are passes to severly punish the users, the judiciary system will almost certainly strike them down if the behavior is relativly harmless (nobody is getting killed), and it isn't deviant.
Legality means nothing to me. I'm not going to switch to a pay service unless it can provide things that Kazaa can't. High quality, full albums, with no DRM. If I can't send copies of songs to my friends over IM, it's worthless in my book.
Also, if it became a 'fee', all hell would break loose. Colleges already charge a crapload for extra stuff lots of people never use, just on the assumption that you "might" use it.
Examples: (per semester at Virginia Tech)
Student activity fee: $113 (most student activities suck)
Athletic fee: $116 (gym crowded, and don't have to attend gym to excercise)
Rec Sports Fee: $71 (the funny thing is most people who actually do rec sports have to buy their own gear as well)
Bus fee: $30 (I use it, but many others don't)
Pay each of those twice a year and that's $660. I don't even want to think about what the "music fee" would be.