I also scrapped my cable now, but I haven't even considered the Netflix or Hulu options.
I'll have to survive without the Discovery Channel, which is about the only thing I miss out on now.
The main reason for me to scrap was that the channels provided started to get really crappy (among that Eurosport lost MotoGP and started to send a lot of football) and any good channels were requiring an extra payment. In addition to this the agreement was updated and went down the drain for me as a customer so I took the safe route and canceled before the new agreement went into effect since the new agreement was turning into a slave agreement.
Cable companies wants us as mindless slaves paying in blood.
And that's a generally good idea. The amount of people using Skype is considerable, so just owning and running it should provide a goodwill in the general public for any company that's involved. That doesn't mean that the brand is worth a humongous amount of money, just that it's worth a decent amount of money.
The bad side with Skype is that it seems to be rather bloated these days occupying a rather large amount of memory in our computers. It's the #3 application in memory consumption on my machine. Considering the services it's offering that is a bit high.
I have made my change - I have canceled my cable subscription since the agreement started to get ridiculous and that they started to add new fees on top of the ordinary subscription. Add to that the number of decent channels slowly diminishing from year to year this means that it's either going to get stupidly expensive to watch TV or it's going to be only free channels to watch.
I did chose the latter... And I do zap when there are commercials. If I only could get AdBlock Plus to handle my remaining TV channels too!
For the music and film industry it's adapt or die that they have to select between, but don't insult your potential customers.
Because every patch installed on a pirated installation may cause it to stop working because the serial number has been blacklisted. So people take their chances and run the OS unpatched.
If Microsoft hadn't fiddled around with the "Genuine (dis)Advantage" thing and other anti-piracy actions then more people would have patched their computers.
The worst problem with video games and things like that is the lower level of physical activity among the young.
Earlier there was the option to stay in and be bored or go out and face the elements. This day you go out on the net and there is no need for a garden, football or playing in the mud.
I suspect that the reason is rather that unclean smells triggers the more competitive behavior of humans because it can be an indication of lack of food or other resources, which in turn means that the strongest and most resourceful can be the one that is gaining the most.
A clean smell can instead tell the subconscious mind that there is sufficient resources available.
So this may be a good reason to actually make sure that public areas are clean.
If the internet is shut down we will see a resurrection of Fidonet.
What will actually cause most trouble is that most people has turned over to internet banking instead of mailing payment orders or standing in line in the bank or post office waiting for their turn to pay their invoices.
And even if they were - would their weapons have been recognized as such and taken care of?
Place an item like a knife correctly in the luggage scanner and it will essentially become invisible. It can appear as part of the construction of a suitcase.
Anyway - the internet "passport" is a really stupid idea. It's not the people surfing that are the problem. It's often sites that you browse to that are a big problem. Or sites you browse to that embeds commercials that contains malicious code and then infects your computer.
This is just a plain "big brother" attitude by Kapersky and what it really does is to hinder the development of future ideas and applications on the net.
The mainly unregulated net we have had has of course created cybercrime like false advertising, scams and spam in addition to what seems to be hunted down most - copyright violations. But it has also brought us things like Facebook, Community sites and Skype in addition to the search engines like Google. All these things have allowed us to go forward. Just realize what would have happened if each of these technologies would have had to apply for providing their service on the net? It would have ended into a "we can't see any market for that service, go and die" attitude and no permission would have been given.
So having to obtain permission to access the net is essentially screwing the net over seven ways from Sunday and it will become stagnant. Criminals will continue through black nets and plain users will continue as long as there are useful services available, but there will be very few new services, and those offered will be from the people with big wallets.
Isn't this an indication that the system is severely flawed when someone pops up very late to the table and claims that they own it?
So limit the patent possibility to physical inventions that you can touch. Softwares and methods are too easy to re-invent all over again, and who can tell if a certain solution has been available before and then silently put to the grave for one reason or another?
Fill the drums with sand and it works for handguns and shrapnel, but then you will need a vehicle able to handle that weight!
Fiction is a lot of extrapolation of an idea or necessity. Even more in Science Fiction. You place a device that may for the plot be plausible or practical. Technobabble is added to that in the movie, but who cares?
What's good with Star Trek, B5 and other shows is that they plant a seed and makes some kids go think "what if it REALLY is possible?". Just because the goal is impossible doesn't mean that you shouldn't try. You may discover something even more amazing when attempting to reach that goal.
If the company you work for is completely legal it shouldn't cause a big mark. If it's government operated it's as safe as it gets. And probably scores higher than if you have had a work for the IRS (or what it's locally called)
But if you work for a telemarketing company (Who doesn't love to hate telemarketers) or in the "adult entertainment" industry (the sexual harassment factor) you may have a harder time.
Anyway - you can't be too sure about anything these days, but if Microsoft doesn't cooperate they will have an even lower respect from the open source community than they have today.
In the end Microsoft are probably needing this cooperation.
Slashdot Mirror
I also scrapped my cable now, but I haven't even considered the Netflix or Hulu options.
I'll have to survive without the Discovery Channel, which is about the only thing I miss out on now.
The main reason for me to scrap was that the channels provided started to get really crappy (among that Eurosport lost MotoGP and started to send a lot of football) and any good channels were requiring an extra payment. In addition to this the agreement was updated and went down the drain for me as a customer so I took the safe route and canceled before the new agreement went into effect since the new agreement was turning into a slave agreement.
Cable companies wants us as mindless slaves paying in blood.
And that's a generally good idea. The amount of people using Skype is considerable, so just owning and running it should provide a goodwill in the general public for any company that's involved. That doesn't mean that the brand is worth a humongous amount of money, just that it's worth a decent amount of money.
The bad side with Skype is that it seems to be rather bloated these days occupying a rather large amount of memory in our computers.
It's the #3 application in memory consumption on my machine. Considering the services it's offering that is a bit high.
I have made my change - I have canceled my cable subscription since the agreement started to get ridiculous and that they started to add new fees on top of the ordinary subscription. Add to that the number of decent channels slowly diminishing from year to year this means that it's either going to get stupidly expensive to watch TV or it's going to be only free channels to watch.
I did chose the latter... And I do zap when there are commercials. If I only could get AdBlock Plus to handle my remaining TV channels too!
For the music and film industry it's adapt or die that they have to select between, but don't insult your potential customers.
Because every patch installed on a pirated installation may cause it to stop working because the serial number has been blacklisted. So people take their chances and run the OS unpatched.
If Microsoft hadn't fiddled around with the "Genuine (dis)Advantage" thing and other anti-piracy actions then more people would have patched their computers.
And anyway - wouldn't it benefit everyone if they merged the interfaces into one, SATA and USB merged into one single unified interface.
They do overlap in functionality.
It's either that or getting a wheelchair before the age of 50...
Damned if you do, damned if you don't!
The worst problem with video games and things like that is the lower level of physical activity among the young.
Earlier there was the option to stay in and be bored or go out and face the elements. This day you go out on the net and there is no need for a garden, football or playing in the mud.
Depends on what brand you select. Some brands deliver with bloated installation CD:s others with relatively clean ones.
This is one of the reasons why people do go to great lengths to install cracked versions of the pure operating system - like XP or Win 7.
MS-DOS 3.11
True - and since I have been brought up on a farm I know that weather is an important problem to worry about.
If you really want to see the scope of troubles in different jobs I suggest that you can watch Mike Rowe in the show "Dirty Jobs".
In reality - either you have a job filled with problems or you have a dull job where you are never challenged intellectually and you become stagnant.
I suspect that the reason is rather that unclean smells triggers the more competitive behavior of humans because it can be an indication of lack of food or other resources, which in turn means that the strongest and most resourceful can be the one that is gaining the most.
A clean smell can instead tell the subconscious mind that there is sufficient resources available.
So this may be a good reason to actually make sure that public areas are clean.
I'm actually running an old P3 machine, and it idles around 30w, but today I would have gone for a VIA or Atom solution.
It all depends on what you want to do and how much computing power you need.
Don't forget that disks and other items also require some power.
If the internet is shut down we will see a resurrection of Fidonet.
What will actually cause most trouble is that most people has turned over to internet banking instead of mailing payment orders or standing in line in the bank or post office waiting for their turn to pay their invoices.
not be able to use it ... without licensing.
On the US market.
On other markets it will probably still be open for competition.
But if such an ad appears I will surely be upset enough to go ballistic. As if the ads today aren't intrusive enough?
A nice little woodchipper would do the trick.
And didn't it all start with Wolfenstein 3D back in 1992?
Of course there have been other FPS games too, but Wolfenstein 3D was a revolution at the time.
And even if they were - would their weapons have been recognized as such and taken care of?
Place an item like a knife correctly in the luggage scanner and it will essentially become invisible. It can appear as part of the construction of a suitcase.
Anyway - the internet "passport" is a really stupid idea. It's not the people surfing that are the problem. It's often sites that you browse to that are a big problem. Or sites you browse to that embeds commercials that contains malicious code and then infects your computer.
This is just a plain "big brother" attitude by Kapersky and what it really does is to hinder the development of future ideas and applications on the net.
The mainly unregulated net we have had has of course created cybercrime like false advertising, scams and spam in addition to what seems to be hunted down most - copyright violations. But it has also brought us things like Facebook, Community sites and Skype in addition to the search engines like Google. All these things have allowed us to go forward. Just realize what would have happened if each of these technologies would have had to apply for providing their service on the net? It would have ended into a "we can't see any market for that service, go and die" attitude and no permission would have been given.
So having to obtain permission to access the net is essentially screwing the net over seven ways from Sunday and it will become stagnant. Criminals will continue through black nets and plain users will continue as long as there are useful services available, but there will be very few new services, and those offered will be from the people with big wallets.
Dell have already lost the race against Acer, and then they are probably to be overtaken by others too.
Patent trolls seems to pop up everywhere.
Isn't this an indication that the system is severely flawed when someone pops up very late to the table and claims that they own it?
So limit the patent possibility to physical inventions that you can touch. Softwares and methods are too easy to re-invent all over again, and who can tell if a certain solution has been available before and then silently put to the grave for one reason or another?
Fill the drums with sand and it works for handguns and shrapnel, but then you will need a vehicle able to handle that weight!
Fiction is a lot of extrapolation of an idea or necessity. Even more in Science Fiction. You place a device that may for the plot be plausible or practical. Technobabble is added to that in the movie, but who cares?
What's good with Star Trek, B5 and other shows is that they plant a seed and makes some kids go think "what if it REALLY is possible?". Just because the goal is impossible doesn't mean that you shouldn't try. You may discover something even more amazing when attempting to reach that goal.
If the company you work for is completely legal it shouldn't cause a big mark. If it's government operated it's as safe as it gets. And probably scores higher than if you have had a work for the IRS (or what it's locally called)
But if you work for a telemarketing company (Who doesn't love to hate telemarketers) or in the "adult entertainment" industry (the sexual harassment factor) you may have a harder time.
Sokoban will keep your brain busy for a while.
And Freeciv if you like a more complex challenge.
Tetris is of course also a classic good game to train your reflexes with.
And if you like flight simulators you have FlightGear.
And of course - if you want to go really classic check out Basic Computer Games.
And what does Borland say about this problem with Sidekick?
At least when I first saw the Sidekick reference I was thinking about that old Borland TSR software.
And then - "Who do you trust and who do you serve?".
Anyway - you can't be too sure about anything these days, but if Microsoft doesn't cooperate they will have an even lower respect from the open source community than they have today.
In the end Microsoft are probably needing this cooperation.
There is already a fork: MariaDB by Monty, one of the MySQL founders.