The universe is cyclical. There's a new big bang every 50 billion years or so. The universe is born, expands, contracts, becomes a point, then explodes again. Just like the earth is round, time and space are also "round," in a manner of speaking.
This is just a theory. Scientists are still trying to figure out if the universe will ever stop expanding, and begin to contract. But it makes sense to me. All things in the universe, both living and inanimate, follow this pattern of birth, growth, decline, and death.
Here's the disturbing fact that keeps me awake a night. The average IQ is 100. That means that half the American population has an IQ of less than 100. And they vote.
Very true Amisinthe. The only way you could make your message sink in with most of the American voting populous is if you could present your ideas on American Idol with songs about specific political issues such as this. Of course, it would have to have a catchy beat with some nice guitar riffs and sweet dance moves if you really wanted to influence peoples' opinions on this matter. Wearing something shiny would probably help too.
I would much rather watch the Thundercats (if only because Cheetara was fit).
Be careful what you wish for. Snarf is one of the few live-action characters that could potentially be more annoying than Jar Jar Binks. I'm willing to bet the Snarf-factor will trump any positive qualities of that movie.
There's also step 4.5: Sell the credit card numbers to a "business associate" so they can tack on more charges.
The bulk of credit card scams are not investigated or prosecuted, which is part of the reason they're so common. Paying private investigators and lawyers costs money, so from a business perspective the credit card companies only go after the larger scams where more than, say, $100,000 has been stolen by a single scammer.
The popularity of this OpenMac scam will hopefully come back to bite them. Granted, they will get a lot more "orders" than they were expecting, but they are also getting a lot more visibility, and presumably a lot more complaints to the Florida Attorney General. I'm hoping that 3 months from now we'll see the Slashdot story "OpenMac Scammers Indited."
1. Set up a website that accepts credit card orders.
2. Collect orders and credit card numbers.
3. Charge the cards.
4. Vanish.
Seriously, if you can't recognize that this is a scam, you really should consider getting off the internet, while your credit card and bank account are still in tact.
The committee passed several resolutions relating to OOXML. The most significant was the establishment of an ad hoc working group to "maintain" the standard.
Why do they need an ad hoc working group to maintain the standard? There's already a multi-billion-dollar corporation actively maintaining the standard. The effort seems redundant.
Catbert uses neither emacs nor vi. He only knows Microsoft Powerpoint. As the director of HR, that's all he needs to know.
Dogbert is proficient with both emacs and vi. However, if you tell him you prefer one, he will tell you he only uses the other one, and then give you a detailed and accurate explanation of why you are an idiot for using the obviously inferior editor.
Windows Vista Sensei travels from place to place in a quest to help the underprivileged global citizens.
Question: How many "underprivileged global citizens" own a computer powerful enough to run Windows Vista?
With growing threat in the world he needed someone to help him in his quest and who better to compliment his strengths and skills than the great Office Master.
Translation: OpenOffice is a threat. Our only hope is to bundle 30-day trial versions of Microsoft Office with Vista. With their combined forces, they'll tear you to Ribbons.
There is a typo in the article summary, corrected below:
Lucas felt that, 'there were a lot more 'Star Wars' stories left to sell. I was eager to start selling some of them through animation and, at the same time, push the animation forward.' I've been a Starwars fan since '77, and I still am. But after enduring atrocities I through III, my expectations for any new material are on the nano scale.
However, when Iraq refuses to cooperate, or the Arabs in Israel refuse to cooperate, the procedures break down and you're left with two countries that can't reach an agreement without raising the stakes.
Replace the word "cooperate" with "capitulate", and I'll agree with your statement.
I write games for the Atari 2600, and my son, who's three and a half, has taken interest in the games I'm working on. In the back of my mind I had always assumed that my kids wouldn't be interested in antique game systems, with all the newer, more advanced games available. But, since my kids haven't even seen the newer games, the Atari is all they know, and they're quite interested in it.
I've let my son play Adventure on the Atari, and of course he loved it. At 3 years old, it can be argued that it does develop hand-to-eye coordination, and familiarity with computer interaction. On many games, we'll share responsibilities, with me manning the directional control, and my son manning the fire button. He really enjoys working with daddy to blast the Space Invaders. Gaming is also useful as a reward for cleaning up one's plate. But at that age, their gaming will be entirely supervised, and limited to a few minutes a day.
I need to hunt down some educational flash games involving numbers and letters. I'm guessing there are plenty out there.
The funniest phrase in that statement is "misappropriating the goodwill and reputation developed by Ford". Yeah, sure. This whole story is overflowing with goodwill, and it seems that reputation is already being affected.
I understand Ford's need to protect its trademark in the context of an actual commercial transaction. That said, Ford would be smart to provide a limited license to fan products like this. Any time you're suing your most devout customers, you're doing something wrong (from a business perspective, not just a moral perspective.)
In the interest of full disclosure, I own a 2007 Ford Mustang. The Last V8. (at least it will be my last V8. Not because of copyright issues. Rather, because of its 18 MPG. Hopefully my next sports car will be full electric.)
I know it doesn't exist. My point is that maybe it should exist. If you physically burn a hole in a surface made of a durable material, it's not going to degrade, as long as you keep it free from contamination.
How did they store the data on the Voyager spacecraft? It's been in space for 30+ years, exposed to cosmic rays.
There is obviously a market for long term data storage that does not deteriorate. The best solution that comes to mind would be a durable plastic surface with tiny laser-burned holes to encode the data. If you keep that in a cold dark room, it should last for centuries. Someone's got to be working on this.
The first two sentences of my original post were meant to be sarcastic. It can be hard to pick up sarcasm in a post, especially if you're not familiar with the poster.
The precedent I was referring to was Apple's deal. The media industry has wanted to tie their content to a single unit, but there's been no way to enforce it in hardware, so it hasn't happened yet. As such, you don't see very many movie distributions that only work on a single device. The only instance I can think of is the Sony PSP UMD movies, which died a painful death. Fortunately the market spoke in that instance, and the answer was a resounding "no." If people want to watch movies on their PSP, they use the flash card, ripped from, yep, a DVD.
This Apple deal is going to be another test of that business model. I hope it will fail. Not because I dislike Apple, or the media companies. I just don't like the business model, because it violates long established interpretations of fair use.
That was a good example with the OEM Microsoft model, especially for laptops. If your laptop ever dies, your OS for that laptop becomes worthless.
I wouldn't mind buying a universal license for a movie across all devices, if it was priced reasonably. But what I think is reasonable, and what the movie industry thinks is reasonable, are very different numbers. The de-facto reasonable price is around 10 bucks, which is how much a DVD costs for most movies these days. I'm sure the movie industry would like that number to be more like 50 bucks, or more.
So their real motivation is helping the customer. The extra 4 dollars that Apple and the movie studios get is just a side-effect.
I worry about this as a precedent. If we keep going down this route, eventually media purchases will be tied to a single device, using digital hardware IDs. I could see a day when you buy a movie, and only have "rights" to play it on one specific DVD player. You would have to provide the hardware ID of that DVD player at the time of purchase. It's no secret that content providers want you to repurchase the same movie a dozen times. One for home use, one for in your car, one for your portable player, one for your PSP, etc. DMCA makes this consumer nightmare possible.
Slashdot Mirror
The universe is cyclical. There's a new big bang every 50 billion years or so. The universe is born, expands, contracts, becomes a point, then explodes again. Just like the earth is round, time and space are also "round," in a manner of speaking.
This is just a theory. Scientists are still trying to figure out if the universe will ever stop expanding, and begin to contract. But it makes sense to me. All things in the universe, both living and inanimate, follow this pattern of birth, growth, decline, and death.
Here's the disturbing fact that keeps me awake a night. The average IQ is 100. That means that half the American population has an IQ of less than 100. And they vote.
I think they prefer "PES, dispenser of justice."
Very true Amisinthe. The only way you could make your message sink in with most of the American voting populous is if you could present your ideas on American Idol with songs about specific political issues such as this. Of course, it would have to have a catchy beat with some nice guitar riffs and sweet dance moves if you really wanted to influence peoples' opinions on this matter. Wearing something shiny would probably help too.
Sad indeed.
True. Jack Thompson's life is more like an MMORPG experience. He never seems to tire of doing corpse runs...
I agree. If Slashdot keeps posting stories like this, they'll have no l'Hôpital.
The Horror. The Horror...
There's also step 4.5: Sell the credit card numbers to a "business associate" so they can tack on more charges.
The bulk of credit card scams are not investigated or prosecuted, which is part of the reason they're so common. Paying private investigators and lawyers costs money, so from a business perspective the credit card companies only go after the larger scams where more than, say, $100,000 has been stolen by a single scammer.
The popularity of this OpenMac scam will hopefully come back to bite them. Granted, they will get a lot more "orders" than they were expecting, but they are also getting a lot more visibility, and presumably a lot more complaints to the Florida Attorney General. I'm hoping that 3 months from now we'll see the Slashdot story "OpenMac Scammers Indited."
Here is Psystar's business model:
1. Set up a website that accepts credit card orders.
2. Collect orders and credit card numbers.
3. Charge the cards.
4. Vanish.
Seriously, if you can't recognize that this is a scam, you really should consider getting off the internet, while your credit card and bank account are still in tact.
Psystar = Shyster
The analogy is perfectly appropriate. We're definitely getting screwed by OOXML.
Why do they need an ad hoc working group to maintain the standard? There's already a multi-billion-dollar corporation actively maintaining the standard. The effort seems redundant.
Catbert uses neither emacs nor vi. He only knows Microsoft Powerpoint. As the director of HR, that's all he needs to know.
Dogbert is proficient with both emacs and vi. However, if you tell him you prefer one, he will tell you he only uses the other one, and then give you a detailed and accurate explanation of why you are an idiot for using the obviously inferior editor.
However, when Iraq refuses to cooperate, or the Arabs in Israel refuse to cooperate, the procedures break down and you're left with two countries that can't reach an agreement without raising the stakes.
Replace the word "cooperate" with "capitulate", and I'll agree with your statement.
A 50 percent reduction in price isn't a competitive sale. It's a clearance sale.
I write games for the Atari 2600, and my son, who's three and a half, has taken interest in the games I'm working on. In the back of my mind I had always assumed that my kids wouldn't be interested in antique game systems, with all the newer, more advanced games available. But, since my kids haven't even seen the newer games, the Atari is all they know, and they're quite interested in it.
I've let my son play Adventure on the Atari, and of course he loved it. At 3 years old, it can be argued that it does develop hand-to-eye coordination, and familiarity with computer interaction. On many games, we'll share responsibilities, with me manning the directional control, and my son manning the fire button. He really enjoys working with daddy to blast the Space Invaders. Gaming is also useful as a reward for cleaning up one's plate. But at that age, their gaming will be entirely supervised, and limited to a few minutes a day.
I need to hunt down some educational flash games involving numbers and letters. I'm guessing there are plenty out there.
Honey, does this trade dress make me look fat?
The funniest phrase in that statement is "misappropriating the goodwill and reputation developed by Ford". Yeah, sure. This whole story is overflowing with goodwill, and it seems that reputation is already being affected.
I understand Ford's need to protect its trademark in the context of an actual commercial transaction. That said, Ford would be smart to provide a limited license to fan products like this. Any time you're suing your most devout customers, you're doing something wrong (from a business perspective, not just a moral perspective.)
In the interest of full disclosure, I own a 2007 Ford Mustang. The Last V8. (at least it will be my last V8. Not because of copyright issues. Rather, because of its 18 MPG. Hopefully my next sports car will be full electric.)
No, you're never supposed to Google Microsoft's site. I'm guessing the recommended solution is to "Live Search" it.
For those who don't know, pleonasm is the redundant use of cute robotic dinosaurs.
I know it doesn't exist. My point is that maybe it should exist. If you physically burn a hole in a surface made of a durable material, it's not going to degrade, as long as you keep it free from contamination.
How did they store the data on the Voyager spacecraft? It's been in space for 30+ years, exposed to cosmic rays.
There is obviously a market for long term data storage that does not deteriorate. The best solution that comes to mind would be a durable plastic surface with tiny laser-burned holes to encode the data. If you keep that in a cold dark room, it should last for centuries. Someone's got to be working on this.
The first two sentences of my original post were meant to be sarcastic. It can be hard to pick up sarcasm in a post, especially if you're not familiar with the poster.
In the future I'll use the [END SARCASM] tag.
The precedent I was referring to was Apple's deal. The media industry has wanted to tie their content to a single unit, but there's been no way to enforce it in hardware, so it hasn't happened yet. As such, you don't see very many movie distributions that only work on a single device. The only instance I can think of is the Sony PSP UMD movies, which died a painful death. Fortunately the market spoke in that instance, and the answer was a resounding "no." If people want to watch movies on their PSP, they use the flash card, ripped from, yep, a DVD.
This Apple deal is going to be another test of that business model. I hope it will fail. Not because I dislike Apple, or the media companies. I just don't like the business model, because it violates long established interpretations of fair use.
That was a good example with the OEM Microsoft model, especially for laptops. If your laptop ever dies, your OS for that laptop becomes worthless.
I wouldn't mind buying a universal license for a movie across all devices, if it was priced reasonably. But what I think is reasonable, and what the movie industry thinks is reasonable, are very different numbers. The de-facto reasonable price is around 10 bucks, which is how much a DVD costs for most movies these days. I'm sure the movie industry would like that number to be more like 50 bucks, or more.
So their real motivation is helping the customer. The extra 4 dollars that Apple and the movie studios get is just a side-effect.
I worry about this as a precedent. If we keep going down this route, eventually media purchases will be tied to a single device, using digital hardware IDs. I could see a day when you buy a movie, and only have "rights" to play it on one specific DVD player. You would have to provide the hardware ID of that DVD player at the time of purchase. It's no secret that content providers want you to repurchase the same movie a dozen times. One for home use, one for in your car, one for your portable player, one for your PSP, etc. DMCA makes this consumer nightmare possible.