Yeah, they keep saying that the "maintainers of the Kazaa network" can track the files people trade. They are idiots because that is where the change came from Napster to all these new P2P apps. Napster was dumb by monitoring and hosting service on their network. The "Kazaa network" is THE INTERNET. The company that wrote the Kazaa program has nothing to do with this phantom network that they supposedly "maintain".
They use what seems to me to be a backwards definition of false positive and false negative with respect to spam filtering. From the article:
Better filters learn recipient preferences and eliminate unwanted messages while suffering from fewer false positives (passing junk messages) and false negatives (screening valuable messages).
I think of this in terms of being tested for HIV. If someone has a false positive, that means they have incorrectly been identified as having the virus being checked for. Doesn't a spam filter indicate "positive" for spamminess to be filtered out, rather than "realness" to be passed? Their definition with respect to spam is the opposite of how I've always heard.
I agree with you regarding some of the standard stuff like Viagra, etc. Unfortunately, spam has spread as a technique for selling just about anything. I have gotten a couple of spams for products that I had already thought about buying. One of them was when looking through ThinkGeek, I saw the Forever Flashlight. It sounded really cool to have a flashlight that uses an LED instead of a bulb and doesn't need batteries. I have gotten a couple of spams trying to sell me Forever Flashlights since then. I don't think they were directing me to ThinkGeek to buy them--I didn't click to find out. That is where it gets dangerous. If you click on one spam for something legitimate, your email address has just become bait for every other spammer to know that it is a "good" address, and one got through.
In the words of a wise 900-year-old muppet: Once you start down the [spam] path, forever will it dominate your [inbox].
Wow, I am pleasantly surprised to get a civil reply back. I don't mean that as anything against you. I was just anticipating the typical response to any criticism on Slashdot. Thank you for gracefully acknowledging the information. I just feel that if people are going to put forth "facts strongly, they should take care that the "facts" are accurate. Otherwise, they should probably be kept to themselves as opinions.
My father was a college English teacher, so I was fortunate enough to get a well-rounded education. I learned the English because I had to and the math and science because I wanted to.
I don't correct people's grammar mistakes in their regular posts on Slashdot because that's rude. I do, however, correct mistakes in people's arrogant attempts at correcting other people. That's an appropriate dose of humility that needs to be meted out. Please do not mod this up or down. I merely want to give a reply to Big_Al_B.
"Wanting" is a verb; you're under the impression it's a noun. Your hypocritical desire to criticize someone's English is another noun, and it's the subject of this sentence too.
Did you learn about verbals in your English classes? In particular please note the gerund. Here is a brief definition: Gerund: a verb form, ending in -ing, which acts as a noun. Running in the park after dark can be dangerous. Gerunds are frequently accompanied by other associated words making up a gerund phrase ("running in the park after dark").
Because gerunds and gerund phrases are nouns, they can be used in any way that a noun can be used:
* as subject: Being king can be dangerous for your health.
* as object of the verb: He didn't particularly like being king.
* as object of a preposition: He wrote a book about being king. (The reference page is here.) Your next comment is correct that he did not use a full sentence. Moving on...
(Original quote) " She only does that towards the end of the RotK. And indecision about the best course for the fellowship is just tiny smidgeon different than wondering whether or not to fulfill the destiny you have been working toward your entire life."
Summarily, we have a meandering, nonsequetorial, and run-on sentence, beginning with the word "And" no less.
The "And" comment is valid, but I am bothered at your calling it a run-on sentence. If I may simplify it to more eaily show the subject, verb, etc., please look at the following: Indecision(subject) is(verb) different(predicate adjective). The rest of the sentence is just dependent clauses. Thisis the reference for predicate adjective.
Please know better before correcting someone else.
Every one of the major characters (except I can't remember a Boromir flashback at the end, but maybe that will be in the extended edition) gets one more scene at the end to "take thier final bows" and the major characters get several "bows".
Yep, it was great to see Sauruman take his final...oh wait...
Oh, what? Of course I'm not going to pay you $1,000/month. Where on Earth did you think I could come up with that amount of money? I was just lying to you to get you to do what I wanted;
OH YEAH! Thank you. I couldn't think up an analogy that applied directly to this ISP situation, but that is perfect in taking the same situation and turning it around. Much respect man.
Correct, unfortunately in this instance it ISN'T false advertising. I should know, I'm in the ad industry. This is merely them using creative wording which as others have explained before means "unlimited time online/access", not "unlimited bandwidth". Now, I agree this is misleading, legally, its ok.
How is that legally OK? That is like someone selling a red car that they advertise as being "black". (suppose with me here) Someone buys the car sight unseen and then when they get to see it, they complain that it isn't really black. The seller then informs them that what they mean by "black" is how it looks if you look at it in a closed garage at night with the lights off. That is one of the fundamentals of what false advertising addresses. It is not OK to pretend a word has a different definition so that you can mislead people. "Unlimited" by itself means NO limits imposed. "Unlimited access" can be used to specify the condition you are talking about. They would be assigning the word unlimited only to the aspect of service that it really applies to. They would not then be making false claims about usage, bandwith, etc. I do semi-agree with many posters' requests that ISPs at least publish the bandwidth limits that make up these invisible caps. That would make it slightly better and allow people to at least try to comply with their demands, but that only addresses the salt in the wound. Their "limit" on an "unlimited" service is still illegal.
Oh, I wish. I'm running out of distros to try. Mandrake 9.1--Installation hangs. Debian 3.0 Woody--Installation hangs. Mandrake 9.2--Finishes installing, but then on first reboot, all desktop text(menus and everything) turns into garbage; still don't know what that problem is. MEPIS--Supposed to run live from CD to begin with; can't even load X--screen flashes and then just goes to a login prompt.
I did get Knoppix to boot successfully. I haven't tried doing their script/kludge to copy it onto the hard drive yet. Who's on deck next? Red Hat? Suse? I know I have a cheap sound card that probably won't make it in Linux, but shouldn't that just not detect instead of hanging the installation? If any distro I haven't tried is good at detecting older hardware, I'll take a suggestion.
If Christ were alive to see people like our President or the officers in our military, tell you about what devoted Christians they are and then rush out to kill people in his name he would be devastated. No matter how justified they think they are, they are committing a hypocrisy of immense proportions.
Well, there is a small difference here between Christ teaching to not retaliate out of a motive of revenge for yourself and the responsibility the president has of protecting innocents. It would be a non-Christlike reaction to say, "They attacked my country; I need to go get them back." However, it would, I think, be acceptable to say, "I have been elected as the leader of this nation, and with that responsibility, I need to do what I can to keep this from happening again, so the people can be safe." That is obviously not something that can be determined by external evaluation of actions, but by what is in one's heart, so that's God's job.
Why is it that no one has taken SCO to court to get an injunction filed against them, barring them from collecting money or sending 'extortion' letters until their case is proved in court?
As I semi-understand the way injunctions work, that would be fine for one company to file an injunction against SCO, and SCO would not be allowed to send them an extortion letter. Since these letters are individually sent, though, an injunction can't prevent them from sending extortion letters to other companies. Injunctions protect you--not the world.
Some friends of mine in college had a mini-fridge in their dorm room. I had first noticed it because it was duct taped closed. I asked why they had a fridge that was taped shut, and they explained that one day one of them had opened the fridge to get something, and the reek that came out made them slam it shut again. They decided they never wanted to let that stink out anywhere, so they just taped it shut and were waiting for a chance to drop it off at a dump.
In their section about SCO: "The SCO Group (Nasdaq: SCOX - News) helps millions of customers in more than 82 countries to grow their businesses everyday[sic]." I didn't know they had legal firms representing them in 82 countries!
Well, the main difference is that the KDE fans like KDE better, while the Gnome fans like Gnome better.
I'm sure this debate can (and probably will) rage on for years. Many people reading this probably won't understand this reply and many others because the poor "noobie" (his own word) who asked the question got immediately smacked with a Troll mod for his curiosity, so he will be filtered out by many. To that moderator: Can you please be nice to the n00bs so more people will be open to Linux?
I'm beginning to use Linux on a desktop at home, and I am glad I've had someone helpful who has been willing to answer these kinds of questions for me. You catch more flies with honey, people.
Wow, I just recently changed my sig, and it's already on topic! I don't really want to change, though, so I stay out of Soviet Russia. (Does subtlety help here?)
Ya know, I have a story about a dead squirrel I had in a cardboard box(really), and I never thought it would be on topic in a Slashdot forum. I don't think the dead squirrel was running NetBSD, but whatever OS it did have had apparently crashed hard.:)
and maybe if more people come to the site, Warp will feel a need to reassess the design.
That is not how business works. They will see that their site is successful, and that must mean (in their minds) that people like it. If something is NOT doing well, that is what gets them thinking that they need to change something.
What I think a lot of sites should have is a small feedback section, where you can rate like 1 to 5 on some aspects--content, appearance, usability, etc. That would give them easily tabulatable information about what people like and don't like about the site. That way they would have to just guess how to improve it. I think large websites don't want that kind of thing cluttering up their page, but they do research in focus groups instead because they can afford to.
Would you lighten up? I was not trying to be critical of your grammar. You seemed to be trying to create a serious appeal to someone in a professional situation, so good grammar and spelling are important to being taken seriously. I thought you would appreciate the help to make it as good as it can be. I understand people make little mistakes sometimes, but I thought you wanted it to be as error-free as possible.
I'm not a grammar nazi that tries to correct everybody in regular postings, but it looked like you really wanted to send that letter, so I thought the advice would be appreciated.
I can't believe the one-sided belief in rights. Anything you think is good: "I/They have every right to do that." Anything you think is bad: "They have no right to do that."
I agree with the parent here in terms of registering domains being a free market business opportunity. Domain names can be registered by anyone. If the company/celebrity was too slow to register the domain, then they should have to try to buy it from the person who registered it. They were, after all, the ones who were forward-thinking enough to realize that it would be valuable. Besides, the only ones powerful enough to make a difference on this also have enough money to entice someone to sell it.
It disgusts me to hear about the success of these court cases, where people who were on the ball enough to register a good domain have been forced to give it up because the bigger company (latecomers!!) decide they want it later.
To continue your analogy, the stampeding herd of angry elephants is within earshot, and have sent you a note to inform you that they intend to pass through your living room at 3:30pm.
Actually, we still haven't seen or heard any elephants. It's just an announcer for the elephant herd that is telling people they have a herd ready to stampede them any time now.
Sometimes spin makes some sense, but when I read this quote from McBride, I just thought, "Huh? How do you get that conclusion?" "By announcing the program --> ??? --> they are acknowledging the problems with Linux."
There could be many reasons why they are doing that, and there isn't any indication of which it is. They state the one they want to believe in but phrase it as an obvious fact. It strikes me as trying to do those proofs in Geometry class in high school. You know the answer you're trying to get, but you can't quite get the direct progression that finally gets there, so the next to the last line is "Well, at this point it's obvious to see that the following is true."
The especially funny part about that is the complete reversal SCO does in this to continue to give the message they want. First they were saying, "If they really sure they were right, they would be indemnifying." Now it's, "They're indemnifying because they're worried they're wrong."
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Your bogus use of statistics would have been funnier if you had gotten correct information from the article. It said US$0.99, not A$0.99.
Yeah, they keep saying that the "maintainers of the Kazaa network" can track the files people trade. They are idiots because that is where the change came from Napster to all these new P2P apps. Napster was dumb by monitoring and hosting service on their network. The "Kazaa network" is THE INTERNET. The company that wrote the Kazaa program has nothing to do with this phantom network that they supposedly "maintain".
I agree with you regarding some of the standard stuff like Viagra, etc. Unfortunately, spam has spread as a technique for selling just about anything. I have gotten a couple of spams for products that I had already thought about buying. One of them was when looking through ThinkGeek, I saw the Forever Flashlight. It sounded really cool to have a flashlight that uses an LED instead of a bulb and doesn't need batteries. I have gotten a couple of spams trying to sell me Forever Flashlights since then. I don't think they were directing me to ThinkGeek to buy them--I didn't click to find out. That is where it gets dangerous. If you click on one spam for something legitimate, your email address has just become bait for every other spammer to know that it is a "good" address, and one got through.
In the words of a wise 900-year-old muppet: Once you start down the [spam] path, forever will it dominate your [inbox].
Wow, I am pleasantly surprised to get a civil reply back. I don't mean that as anything against you. I was just anticipating the typical response to any criticism on Slashdot. Thank you for gracefully acknowledging the information. I just feel that if people are going to put forth "facts strongly, they should take care that the "facts" are accurate. Otherwise, they should probably be kept to themselves as opinions.
My father was a college English teacher, so I was fortunate enough to get a well-rounded education. I learned the English because I had to and the math and science because I wanted to.
Please do not mod this up or down. I merely want to give a reply to Big_Al_B.
Did you learn about verbals in your English classes? In particular please note the gerund. Here is a brief definition:
Gerund: a verb form, ending in -ing, which acts as a noun. Running in the park after dark can be dangerous. Gerunds are frequently accompanied by other associated words making up a gerund phrase ("running in the park after dark").
Because gerunds and gerund phrases are nouns, they can be used in any way that a noun can be used:
* as subject: Being king can be dangerous for your health.
* as object of the verb: He didn't particularly like being king.
* as object of a preposition: He wrote a book about being king.
(The reference page is here.)
Your next comment is correct that he did not use a full sentence. Moving on...
(Original quote) " She only does that towards the end of the RotK. And indecision about the best course for the fellowship is just tiny smidgeon different than wondering whether or not to fulfill the destiny you have been working toward your entire life."
The "And" comment is valid, but I am bothered at your calling it a run-on sentence. If I may simplify it to more eaily show the subject, verb, etc., please look at the following:
Indecision(subject) is(verb) different(predicate adjective). The rest of the sentence is just dependent clauses.
Thisis the reference for predicate adjective.
Please know better before correcting someone else.
That is one of the fundamentals of what false advertising addresses. It is not OK to pretend a word has a different definition so that you can mislead people. "Unlimited" by itself means NO limits imposed. "Unlimited access" can be used to specify the condition you are talking about. They would be assigning the word unlimited only to the aspect of service that it really applies to. They would not then be making false claims about usage, bandwith, etc.
I do semi-agree with many posters' requests that ISPs at least publish the bandwidth limits that make up these invisible caps. That would make it slightly better and allow people to at least try to comply with their demands, but that only addresses the salt in the wound. Their "limit" on an "unlimited" service is still illegal.
Oh, I wish. I'm running out of distros to try. Mandrake 9.1--Installation hangs.
Debian 3.0 Woody--Installation hangs.
Mandrake 9.2--Finishes installing, but then on first reboot, all desktop text(menus and everything) turns into garbage; still don't know what that problem is.
MEPIS--Supposed to run live from CD to begin with; can't even load X--screen flashes and then just goes to a login prompt.
I did get Knoppix to boot successfully. I haven't tried doing their script/kludge to copy it onto the hard drive yet. Who's on deck next? Red Hat? Suse? I know I have a cheap sound card that probably won't make it in Linux, but shouldn't that just not detect instead of hanging the installation? If any distro I haven't tried is good at detecting older hardware, I'll take a suggestion.
It's OK. Someone just posted a map to the conference room at Google's headquarters, where they are holding a satellite rebroadcast.
more importantly--a phone number!
Now you see the comparison between the geek and non-geek responses.
Some friends of mine in college had a mini-fridge in their dorm room. I had first noticed it because it was duct taped closed. I asked why they had a fridge that was taped shut, and they explained that one day one of them had opened the fridge to get something, and the reek that came out made them slam it shut again. They decided they never wanted to let that stink out anywhere, so they just taped it shut and were waiting for a chance to drop it off at a dump.
In their section about SCO:
"The SCO Group (Nasdaq: SCOX - News) helps millions of customers in more than 82 countries to grow their businesses everyday[sic]."
I didn't know they had legal firms representing them in 82 countries!
Well, the main difference is that the KDE fans like KDE better, while the Gnome fans like Gnome better.
I'm sure this debate can (and probably will) rage on for years. Many people reading this probably won't understand this reply and many others because the poor "noobie" (his own word) who asked the question got immediately smacked with a Troll mod for his curiosity, so he will be filtered out by many. To that moderator: Can you please be nice to the n00bs so more people will be open to Linux?
I'm beginning to use Linux on a desktop at home, and I am glad I've had someone helpful who has been willing to answer these kinds of questions for me. You catch more flies with honey, people.
It does, but they do not allow admission to corporate entities. They only have individual seating, so MS is out of luck in purchasing a suite there.
Wow, I just recently changed my sig, and it's already on topic! I don't really want to change, though, so I stay out of Soviet Russia. (Does subtlety help here?)
Ya know, I have a story about a dead squirrel I had in a cardboard box(really), and I never thought it would be on topic in a Slashdot forum. I don't think the dead squirrel was running NetBSD, but whatever OS it did have had apparently crashed hard. :)
What I think a lot of sites should have is a small feedback section, where you can rate like 1 to 5 on some aspects--content, appearance, usability, etc. That would give them easily tabulatable information about what people like and don't like about the site. That way they would have to just guess how to improve it. I think large websites don't want that kind of thing cluttering up their page, but they do research in focus groups instead because they can afford to.
Would you lighten up? I was not trying to be critical of your grammar. You seemed to be trying to create a serious appeal to someone in a professional situation, so good grammar and spelling are important to being taken seriously. I thought you would appreciate the help to make it as good as it can be. I understand people make little mistakes sometimes, but I thought you wanted it to be as error-free as possible.
I'm not a grammar nazi that tries to correct everybody in regular postings, but it looked like you really wanted to send that letter, so I thought the advice would be appreciated.
OK? No offense to you; no offense to me?
I can't believe the one-sided belief in rights. Anything you think is good:
"I/They have every right to do that."
Anything you think is bad:
"They have no right to do that."
I agree with the parent here in terms of registering domains being a free market business opportunity. Domain names can be registered by anyone. If the company/celebrity was too slow to register the domain, then they should have to try to buy it from the person who registered it. They were, after all, the ones who were forward-thinking enough to realize that it would be valuable. Besides, the only ones powerful enough to make a difference on this also have enough money to entice someone to sell it.
It disgusts me to hear about the success of these court cases, where people who were on the ball enough to register a good domain have been forced to give it up because the bigger company (latecomers!!) decide they want it later.
Sometimes spin makes some sense, but when I read this quote from McBride, I just thought, "Huh? How do you get that conclusion?"
"By announcing the program --> ??? --> they are acknowledging the problems with Linux."
There could be many reasons why they are doing that, and there isn't any indication of which it is. They state the one they want to believe in but phrase it as an obvious fact. It strikes me as trying to do those proofs in Geometry class in high school. You know the answer you're trying to get, but you can't quite get the direct progression that finally gets there, so the next to the last line is "Well, at this point it's obvious to see that the following is true."
The especially funny part about that is the complete reversal SCO does in this to continue to give the message they want. First they were saying, "If they really sure they were right, they would be indemnifying." Now it's, "They're indemnifying because they're worried they're wrong."