Saw this dupe article in the mysterious future....emailed the on duty editor as fast as I could, and it went anyways well *dons flamesuit* let's get ready to rumble....
All true, however the primary focus I think is more Eco-Friendly than mileage (though I did seem to emphasize otherwise in my parent post). However hybrids to excel in emissions over any gas vehicle...
So ya wanna spend 12 grand to help the environment eh?
Off hand a few other ideas:
1) How about a hybrid gas/electric vehicle (or if you can find one, an all electric one)? They do better in mileage than all gas vehicles and do near zero emissions. Consider this one carefully though. Also 12 grand alone probably won't cover it, you're going to have finance approx. 8 grand or so.
2) Looked at your air conditioning and/or heating systems lately? Cheaper investments, though the returns on your electric/gas bills won't be as much as the solar option
Other than that, just little things come to mind...
Would welcome this with some skepticism and hope that the revenues from such a tax might go to benefit the online community (less Spam, Phishers, Identity thieves, etc). Then I remember, U.S. government, War in Iraq....*sigh* pardon me for being so naive...
Longer story, my favorite all time game is the old classic Chess. Whether it's getting cremated by my computer or playing and even occasionally beating humans online or offline. The depth and amount it makes me think is just great.
Favorite dedicated computer game you ask? Try Civilization 2. Civ 3 for some reason seemed more fluff and the same amount of meat as Civ 2 (hence making it slower and doing nothing really for gameplay). Though I need to try FreeCiv one day.
In general I just like games that make me think more than anything else. FPS games amongst others are interesting for about 10 minutes then I just walk away.
Customer Service for Dummies (ISBN: 0764552090, find at your favorite bookstore) is a good book on customer service, deals mostly with face to face interaction than at an organizational level. However it's those little things that count mostly. Find it and see!
Is this another nail in the coffin of paid content?
HAH! I subscribe to 3 paid sites. Granted I'm a part-time investor, I find thestreet.com and wsj online to be quite handy. Also consumerreports.org for a small fee keeps me tuned to what is good out there and what is a scam.
Sure I can try and pirate the content out there, but that would require some searching and a guilty feeling for making/saving money at others expense and all these paid sites are very good in and of themselves. So paid content isn't going away any time soon.
Would I pay for CNN though? Something that I can easily find on TV? Probably not, but again by that logic, how many people watch CNN (a PAID cable channel) and still go out and pay the $0.35 for the Los Angeles Times? People will pay for what they perceive as good content, online or wherever.
eeeeh I think at this point the ACLU and EFF amongst everyone else is watching everything on Congress's table like a hawk. They've tried doing this before if I'm not mistaken (didn't they try and sneak renewing pieces of the Patriot act into another bill at some point?) It's not that easy anymore...
Well my 2 cents:
#1 Is theoretically possible, maybe in a new hardware installation that disabled an old device driver and attempted (and failed) to load a new one. Though if you're installing new hardware, would that void your warranty?
#2 Also tricky to pull, I'd have to assume negligence in setting up your Internet settings is what caused this (or why play with that?). Perhaps you were setting up a new ISP, complete with new settings when you hit that checkbox.
#3 I'm suspecting a trojan or other malware doing something at that point. What else could corrupt explorer.exe?
meh, it depends on what your rep has in mind. If he brings lots of people in (say his entire staff and then some), you're going to have to get your ideas across to everyone and the Powerpoint will be the easiest way to do this. If it's just you and him (or maybe a few more), then yeah I'd probably take your approach.
Normally I'd like to stand up to you and say "not everyone is so coldhearted to be just money grubbing...", but then I remember who my rep is (he'll remain nameless), and say "aaaah forget it...",. Hopefully (as described in a post on this thread by myself) a good argument will mean as much as any wallet.
Congrats you managed (or will manage) to get some face time with a big guy in govt. Just remember the following points:
1) The guy is a busy man with lots in his mind, keep it brief and to the point at all times, in fact if you have an hour of time, present for 30 minutes and give the rest for him to either ask questions or politely take leave as he needs, prepare to present to not just your rep, but maybe his staff and other reps that might choose to join in (it's possible).
2) Impassioned emotional pleas are no good here, construct a good well founded argument and you will do awesome. Do your homework throughly before going in. Also if you happen to know a lawyer that's willing to help you, ask him to help draft your statements before going in (better still ask if he can join you in presenting to the rep).
3) Prepare oral arguments (the old fashioned Powerpoints or whatever your favorite pesentation software is will do here), as well as a brief (no more than 5 page) written argument to leave with him.
Having little knowledge in particular about open source software patents in particular other than what's on Slashdot, I'll leave the rest to you to reasearch and form up.
Try this and you might just be amazed at your reponse. I look forward to seeing your arguments drafted into a floor bill at the House:-)
Well how about a lesser punishment, just mod this and the parent post as Flamebait and ruin my Karma for a little bit while I try and rebuild? Certainly I am unworthy of the Slashdot "death penalty?"
It's been happening to some extent already. I remember when you could find an Indian programming contractor for $15/hr (This would be a good programmer with a decent programming skillset). Nowadays it's about $20/hr which is approaching the low-end of U.S. Programmers now. Granted you can find low-end U.S. programmers now about $25/hr from my epxerience. In fact at that point is it worth the extra overhead and inconvenience of having your programmers that far away? Hmmmmm.....
Well I knew Sun was having business problems, but I hope going supernova doesn't happen. I mean being in the same solar system as Sun Microsystems could be a real problem if they go supernova...EVERYBODY RUN!!!!
Really??? I've tried running Win2k on my PentiumII 350 w/128MB RAM, pretty damn slow (though theoretically doable if you have patience). Mostly it seemed 128MB RAM was inadequate granted there was frequent disk swapping. The motherboard I have could go all the way to 512, so I'm thinking about doing that.
Not really, assuming:
1) You're paying students $8/hour
2) You work students 15 hours/week (they gotta study sometime) = $6240
I can do 2 students with room left over for a trained chimp (we'll assume $2,500 worth of bannanas and computer repair bill from feces thrown at computer).
With 2 students you could probably upkeep a small university ok (say 150 computers per student) after that I'd put the students to work finding an automated solution.
Anti Trust???? Linux is free and open source. There will be harm to the Linux market with the possible absorption and loss of a key player, however it will heal itself over time and keep going. To dominate Linux, Microsoft would have to buy out every geek out there hacking Kernel source now and in the future. Not impossible for a billion dollar company but extremely difficult.
In regards to Microsoft? A perfectly viable alternative to Microsoft taking over RedHat would be for them to roll their own Linux Distro provided they GPL it and everything.
For these 2 facts I don't see how the O/S market is significantly harmed, and how Microsoft gains marketshare. No anti-trust here I'm afraid:-/
Hmmmm can a country claim soverignty over it's outer space region? Or what would stop me from launching a satellite in Geosynchronous orbit over china to provide broadband? Now China could one day in the near future get the capability to shoot down that satellite but until then they get unfiltered Internet and I get lots of money!!!
True dat, now I only hope the dissidents are as good at this as we are....
Also a wild thought, we're talking repressive governments. If this government is powerful enough to throw some weight (we'll use China for this example), they might pull a secret agreement with said SSL encrypted site where "we let you run in this country, you provide us with your private key". Then anything is possible....
Or for that matter, what would stop a government from saying "We'll filter all SSL that isn't issued by our certificating authority." and then creating a certificate authority that copies the government on the private key...it's hard to tell the full extent of how repressive an evil government can be...
SSL Itself is vulnerable to man in the middle attacks (Google for details), the repressive governments in question, with their controlling proxies would be delighted to use such an attack if they had the hackers for it. The question is how far do they want to go?
The only issue I see with that is that it is possible to detect (though not decode) encryption. If a repressive government sees a particular pattern coming from a particular cybercafe, they'll start watching more and someone could still be in trouble under the "well why would you encrypt it? You must be a dissident!" assumption. That could be just as bad as if they were leaving it unencrypted....
Slashdot Mirror
Saw this dupe article in the mysterious future....emailed the on duty editor as fast as I could, and it went anyways well *dons flamesuit* let's get ready to rumble....
All true, however the primary focus I think is more Eco-Friendly than mileage (though I did seem to emphasize otherwise in my parent post). However hybrids to excel in emissions over any gas vehicle...
So ya wanna spend 12 grand to help the environment eh?
Off hand a few other ideas:
1) How about a hybrid gas/electric vehicle (or if you can find one, an all electric one)? They do better in mileage than all gas vehicles and do near zero emissions. Consider this one carefully though. Also 12 grand alone probably won't cover it, you're going to have finance approx. 8 grand or so.
2) Looked at your air conditioning and/or heating systems lately? Cheaper investments, though the returns on your electric/gas bills won't be as much as the solar option
Other than that, just little things come to mind...
Would welcome this with some skepticism and hope that the revenues from such a tax might go to benefit the online community (less Spam, Phishers, Identity thieves, etc). Then I remember, U.S. government, War in Iraq....*sigh* pardon me for being so naive...
Yes
Longer story, my favorite all time game is the old classic Chess. Whether it's getting cremated by my computer or playing and even occasionally beating humans online or offline. The depth and amount it makes me think is just great.
Favorite dedicated computer game you ask? Try Civilization 2. Civ 3 for some reason seemed more fluff and the same amount of meat as Civ 2 (hence making it slower and doing nothing really for gameplay). Though I need to try FreeCiv one day.
In general I just like games that make me think more than anything else. FPS games amongst others are interesting for about 10 minutes then I just walk away.
Customer Service for Dummies (ISBN: 0764552090, find at your favorite bookstore) is a good book on customer service, deals mostly with face to face interaction than at an organizational level. However it's those little things that count mostly. Find it and see!
Is this another nail in the coffin of paid content?
HAH! I subscribe to 3 paid sites. Granted I'm a part-time investor, I find thestreet.com and wsj online to be quite handy. Also consumerreports.org for a small fee keeps me tuned to what is good out there and what is a scam.
Sure I can try and pirate the content out there, but that would require some searching and a guilty feeling for making/saving money at others expense and all these paid sites are very good in and of themselves. So paid content isn't going away any time soon.
Would I pay for CNN though? Something that I can easily find on TV? Probably not, but again by that logic, how many people watch CNN (a PAID cable channel) and still go out and pay the $0.35 for the Los Angeles Times? People will pay for what they perceive as good content, online or wherever.
eeeeh I think at this point the ACLU and EFF amongst everyone else is watching everything on Congress's table like a hawk. They've tried doing this before if I'm not mistaken (didn't they try and sneak renewing pieces of the Patriot act into another bill at some point?) It's not that easy anymore...
Well my 2 cents: #1 Is theoretically possible, maybe in a new hardware installation that disabled an old device driver and attempted (and failed) to load a new one. Though if you're installing new hardware, would that void your warranty?
#2 Also tricky to pull, I'd have to assume negligence in setting up your Internet settings is what caused this (or why play with that?). Perhaps you were setting up a new ISP, complete with new settings when you hit that checkbox.
#3 I'm suspecting a trojan or other malware doing something at that point. What else could corrupt explorer.exe?
meh, it depends on what your rep has in mind. If he brings lots of people in (say his entire staff and then some), you're going to have to get your ideas across to everyone and the Powerpoint will be the easiest way to do this. If it's just you and him (or maybe a few more), then yeah I'd probably take your approach.
Normally I'd like to stand up to you and say "not everyone is so coldhearted to be just money grubbing...", but then I remember who my rep is (he'll remain nameless), and say "aaaah forget it...",. Hopefully (as described in a post on this thread by myself) a good argument will mean as much as any wallet.
Congrats you managed (or will manage) to get some face time with a big guy in govt. Just remember the following points:
:-)
1) The guy is a busy man with lots in his mind, keep it brief and to the point at all times, in fact if you have an hour of time, present for 30 minutes and give the rest for him to either ask questions or politely take leave as he needs, prepare to present to not just your rep, but maybe his staff and other reps that might choose to join in (it's possible).
2) Impassioned emotional pleas are no good here, construct a good well founded argument and you will do awesome. Do your homework throughly before going in. Also if you happen to know a lawyer that's willing to help you, ask him to help draft your statements before going in (better still ask if he can join you in presenting to the rep).
3) Prepare oral arguments (the old fashioned Powerpoints or whatever your favorite pesentation software is will do here), as well as a brief (no more than 5 page) written argument to leave with him.
Having little knowledge in particular about open source software patents in particular other than what's on Slashdot, I'll leave the rest to you to reasearch and form up.
Try this and you might just be amazed at your reponse. I look forward to seeing your arguments drafted into a floor bill at the House
Well how about a lesser punishment, just mod this and the parent post as Flamebait and ruin my Karma for a little bit while I try and rebuild? Certainly I am unworthy of the Slashdot "death penalty?"
Here I'll help you out if you or anyone is trying. Karma be dammed here :-)
X YZ0123456789!@#$%^&*()-_+=;:'",/?~`\|
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVW
Hope I didn't miss anything!
Why we can't listen to 42.8 on a radio anymore? Forgive me but I'm just a radio newb who just has one in his car. Thanks!
It's been happening to some extent already. I remember when you could find an Indian programming contractor for $15/hr (This would be a good programmer with a decent programming skillset). Nowadays it's about $20/hr which is approaching the low-end of U.S. Programmers now. Granted you can find low-end U.S. programmers now about $25/hr from my epxerience. In fact at that point is it worth the extra overhead and inconvenience of having your programmers that far away? Hmmmmm.....
AND the Sun goes supernova
Well I knew Sun was having business problems, but I hope going supernova doesn't happen. I mean being in the same solar system as Sun Microsystems could be a real problem if they go supernova...EVERYBODY RUN!!!!
Well it's crackable if I know that you're using this, I'll just set up my little pirate radio station nearby on your frequency...dooh!
Really??? I've tried running Win2k on my PentiumII 350 w/128MB RAM, pretty damn slow (though theoretically doable if you have patience). Mostly it seemed 128MB RAM was inadequate granted there was frequent disk swapping. The motherboard I have could go all the way to 512, so I'm thinking about doing that.
Not really, assuming: 1) You're paying students $8/hour 2) You work students 15 hours/week (they gotta study sometime) = $6240 I can do 2 students with room left over for a trained chimp (we'll assume $2,500 worth of bannanas and computer repair bill from feces thrown at computer). With 2 students you could probably upkeep a small university ok (say 150 computers per student) after that I'd put the students to work finding an automated solution.
Anti Trust???? Linux is free and open source. There will be harm to the Linux market with the possible absorption and loss of a key player, however it will heal itself over time and keep going. To dominate Linux, Microsoft would have to buy out every geek out there hacking Kernel source now and in the future. Not impossible for a billion dollar company but extremely difficult.
:-/
In regards to Microsoft? A perfectly viable alternative to Microsoft taking over RedHat would be for them to roll their own Linux Distro provided they GPL it and everything.
For these 2 facts I don't see how the O/S market is significantly harmed, and how Microsoft gains marketshare. No anti-trust here I'm afraid
Hmmmm can a country claim soverignty over it's outer space region? Or what would stop me from launching a satellite in Geosynchronous orbit over china to provide broadband? Now China could one day in the near future get the capability to shoot down that satellite but until then they get unfiltered Internet and I get lots of money!!!
True dat, now I only hope the dissidents are as good at this as we are....
Also a wild thought, we're talking repressive governments. If this government is powerful enough to throw some weight (we'll use China for this example), they might pull a secret agreement with said SSL encrypted site where "we let you run in this country, you provide us with your private key". Then anything is possible....
Or for that matter, what would stop a government from saying "We'll filter all SSL that isn't issued by our certificating authority." and then creating a certificate authority that copies the government on the private key...it's hard to tell the full extent of how repressive an evil government can be...
SSL Itself is vulnerable to man in the middle attacks (Google for details), the repressive governments in question, with their controlling proxies would be delighted to use such an attack if they had the hackers for it. The question is how far do they want to go?
The only issue I see with that is that it is possible to detect (though not decode) encryption. If a repressive government sees a particular pattern coming from a particular cybercafe, they'll start watching more and someone could still be in trouble under the "well why would you encrypt it? You must be a dissident!" assumption. That could be just as bad as if they were leaving it unencrypted....