For spelling and definitions, refer to either the Oxford English Dictionary (preferred) or the American Heritage Dictionary (a close second). Avoid Webster's (a crappy, poorly edited collection of modern slang and incorrect grammar)at all costs.
For grammar:
The Elements of Style, by William Strunk Jr., E.B. White and Roger Angell.
All these are updated periodically to reflect accepted changes in the language. That's all the standardization you need!
Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. I was a musician and recording engineer for most of my professional life before switching to IT a couple of years ago, and I have found the myths surrounding cable and sound quality to be...well, just incredible. Really, the amount of bullshit is staggering. Noel Lee from Monster Cable has mades hundreds of millions of dollars off of the human need for one-upmanship and the abysmal ignorance of the audiophile crowd. It's horrifying, it really is.
I'd add one cable to your list of acceptables (although both Mogami and Belkin are great): Canare. Star-Quad for balanced, GS-6 for unbalanced. Good stuff, noiseless, and DOES NOT BREAK. I've got a pair of Canare guitar cables that are nineteen years old and still make no noise when moved or even stepped on. And they make good ends, a little bit cheaper than Neutriks.
Thanks for speaking the truth, not that anyone will pay attention.
Amen. I've got the K7S5A (running since early 2001) and two of the K7VTA3 6 series boards, and all three have been running 24 hours a day, with no problems since the day I bought them. I use good memory, which helps, underclock one (silent PC for audio recording) but the motherboards have been just rock-steady for me.
It's to stop the incessant crapfloods that have been hitting a lot of stories lately, crapfloods that are being lauched through valid registered user accounts.
And you don't get the "captcha" if you've got excellent karma.
I guess you haven't been reading the news recently...it doesn't seem to be working for W. too well at all recently.
The public may be stupid, but we've started to notice that war, organized state religion, and killing minority rights in Congress isn't filling our gas tanks, generating jobs, making the stock market rise, or bringing Seinfeld back.
It's not working for W. It's REALLY not working for Microsft anymore. You can smell the desperation from both Ballmer and Gates recently...I wonder what they know that we don't?
Microsoft has never done anything but get involved in social issues. Who the fuck does Ballmer think he's kidding?
Microsoft has bought wholesale into the media-generated myth that religious issues matter to the majority of the populace, and made a conscious decision to allow a vocal but fundamentally powerless minority to dictate their corporate policy. Unbelievable.
What the courts couldn't do, a member of the American Taliban managed to accomplish with a few meetings and one veiled threat. I'm horrified, yet impressed as well.
Nowhere in TFA does anyone call for making users of GPL'd software pay for using it. Nothing in the article even implies that, much less states it explicitly.
I'm no Slashdot basher, far from it. But this it hands down the worst summary I've ever seen on this site.
Damn, I'm in exactly the same musician boat as you are. Former pro, no rights to anything I worked on in the past. The terms of the contract weren't merely onerous: We received 5% of NET revenue, with all production expenses to be repaid.
You do the math, dear reader. For every one million dollars of revenue received by the record company, we got $50,000, to be split four ways. And we had to repay the recording, production and artwork expenses (also note we couldn't shop around to get the best rates on these things, either...we had to use the facilities that the company mandated).
In my book, that's nothing but slavery.
I love the responses I get when I bring this up: "You shouldn't have signed a contract like that". You're right, I should have worked at McDonalds instead. FOR THE MUSICIAN, THE OPTION IS SIGN OR DON'T WORK. People don't understand. "Monopoly" is not a strong enough word for it, and neither is "stranglehold".
The artists are not getting ripped off from file sharing. We got ripped off a long time ago, and it wasn't by our listeners.
All copyright does is insure that I'll NEVER make any money off my work. That privilege belongs to the record company, which will own and profit from MY work for the rest of my life plus some number of years afterwards.
You tell me...is this fair? Is this how copyright is supposed to work? Because to me it looks like someone stole from me and it's perfectly legal.
Yeah, with the huge exception that they are using money taken from you by threat of force to pay for this service for "everyone." This will lead to some people paying for wifi twice, and some people paying for it but not even needing or using it.
Ha! That's kinda the same way I feel about roads. I've ridden a bike for the last six years and don't own a car, but I still have to pay for roads and traffic infrastructure that I don't use and that in some cases works directly against my best interests as a rider.
I get where you're coming from, but I just don't agree with your stance. Were I to take your position on wi-fi towards roads, I'd be morally right to do so. I don't use them and have to pay for someone else to benefit by them. Unfair? To me, absolutely. To society at large? I'm pretty sure that society, in order to exist in its present form, needs roads.
I probably wouldn't use wi-fi very much were it a free municipal service, much the same as I don't use libraries very often. But it's nice to have the option, and municipal wi-fi strikes me as the kind of thing I'm OK with having my tax dollars spent on. Frankly, I'm a lot more OK with that than with my taxes going to roads and gasoline subsidies.
I don't see anything in any municipal Wi-Fi proposal, anywhere, that says the municipality will be the sole mandatory provider of wireless services. So I'm unclear as to how "the government" obtains a monopoly from these proposals. They're just one provider among many. And since I PAID for the freaking infrastructure, I'd like to see the government I ELECTED have the option to provide service on that infrastructure.
What is clear from the article and legislation being proposed is that SBC doesn't want competitors. Had you read the article, you would have read that there are not "a lot" of Wi-Fi providers duking it our in Texas, but only two, SBC and Verizon. It's quite clear that they want a duopoly, just like they have here in northern San Diego, and they'll spilt the state up between the two of them, just like they have here in Southern California. SBC gets some areas, Verizon gets the rest. There's no locale here where you get to choose between them. It's either one or the other. It's not pretty. High cost and shitty, surly service.
I wish you had a good point with the "do you want the government owning your ISP" argument, but sadly every ISP in America seems more than willing to comply with any government request for information or restrictions, legal or not. I just can't see how it would make any difference who my provider is, government or private, as they all operate under the same rules and restrictions.
Sadly, I can think of at least clear benefit from "the government" owning my ISP, in that they have little financial incentive to harvest and sell information about my browsing and buying habits as so many ISPs do.
Good God, this may be the most depressing thing I've ever read.
This bill is no different then, let's say, forbidding the citizens of a municipality from forming their own fire department...and making only one company the legal provider of "fire protection services".
In short, SBC is asking the state of Texas to provide them with a legally-approved monopoly. And the state is doing it.
When does this stop? When will citizens realize that the very people they're putting in office are signing over every right and interest they have to corporations who has no regard for their health, safety, or welfare? (And I'm hoping that the citizenry is ignorant of what's happening, because if they're not, the notion that people are willing to sign over their democratic rights is too depressing for me to contemplate)
I'd like to introduce you to a little concept called "lying". Come on now, is it really that hard to make up a user name and give them a mailinator address, like I did?
You didn't read TFA, did you? (It's slashdot...why would you?)
What I assume is that my viewing and purchasing habits are my own business and no one else's, and I take steps to make sure it stays that way. Had you read the fine article, you'd realize that I'm in the majority.
There's "too much money" for vendors to use tracking, much as they would like to. The consumers are voting with their actions and their dollars, and are saying loud and clear that they don't like to be tracked and don't want to be tracked. Vendors who don't listen can track all they want, and wonder why it is that sales keep going down...get it?
Smart business people listen to their consumers and give them what they want.
So, until some wackjob legislator decides to make tracking software mandatory, companies can develop all the tracking methods they want. Consumers will demand, and get, tools to disable them.
Your problem (and this wouldn't be problem with a better employer) is that you let yourself get walked on.
I mean no slander by this; I did it too for years. The nice guy who is always up for "helping out" and "going above and beyond the call of duty". Sad to say, but in most places this will get you nothing more than, at best, maybe a little bit of lube before you get bent over. Sometimes they just drill you even harder with no lube. And your current employer is bending you over big time.
I work for a great company now and occasionally feel bad about not going the extra mile and helping out, but I've gotten all my raises just the same and I'm certainly in no danger of getting shitcanned.
And I go home on time.
And I no longer have stomach trouble.
Just do your job. Let someone else be a hero. You'll be getting most of their raise anyway.
I'll bite.
Repackaging an open source project to sell is fine, subject basically to several conditions:
1. You make the source code available (I don't know if that's happened here or not).
2. You keep all the original credits for code already written. They are trying to pass it off as their own original work, which is not OK.
3. Anyone who buys it also must agree and abide by the GPL. They're trying to sell it under a different and propietary license. You can't do that either.
So, since the company in question refuses to change their violating practices, the developers must sue them. As is the American way, unfortunately.
How is this different from Operation Rescue (self-admitted right-extremists) referring to the Pinellas County police as "Gestapo", "Stormtroopers", and "Nazis"? I don't see any FBI kicking down their front doors.
Apparently you're unfamiliar with a concept known as "freedom of speech".
Most of my fellow Americans are as ignorant, unfortunately.
Oh, I get it! You're trying to equate the rate of the spread of a deadly disease with a court decision on taxation...wait, I don't get it.
What exactly is your point? Seriously. I don't understand your comment at all.
Ummm, there's a reason for the cockpit door being where it is. Pilots also like being able to get out of a plane when it's on fire, crashed, that sort of thing.
Slashdot Mirror
It's already been done.
For spelling and definitions, refer to either the Oxford English Dictionary (preferred) or the American Heritage Dictionary (a close second). Avoid Webster's (a crappy, poorly edited collection of modern slang and incorrect grammar)at all costs.
For grammar:
The Elements of Style, by William Strunk Jr., E.B. White and Roger Angell.
All these are updated periodically to reflect accepted changes in the language. That's all the standardization you need!
type-o's? Is that some kind of cereal?
It's "typo".
Short for "typographical error".
So are you dumb, lazy, or do you use a lot of resources? Or all three? Another dumb American wants to know.
Belden. Jesus. Posting without reading is bad. Sorry.
Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. I was a musician and recording engineer for most of my professional life before switching to IT a couple of years ago, and I have found the myths surrounding cable and sound quality to be...well, just incredible. Really, the amount of bullshit is staggering. Noel Lee from Monster Cable has mades hundreds of millions of dollars off of the human need for one-upmanship and the abysmal ignorance of the audiophile crowd. It's horrifying, it really is.
I'd add one cable to your list of acceptables (although both Mogami and Belkin are great): Canare. Star-Quad for balanced, GS-6 for unbalanced. Good stuff, noiseless, and DOES NOT BREAK. I've got a pair of Canare guitar cables that are nineteen years old and still make no noise when moved or even stepped on. And they make good ends, a little bit cheaper than Neutriks.
Thanks for speaking the truth, not that anyone will pay attention.
It's called Valium. I think you need some.
Amen. I've got the K7S5A (running since early 2001) and two of the K7VTA3 6 series boards, and all three have been running 24 hours a day, with no problems since the day I bought them. I use good memory, which helps, underclock one (silent PC for audio recording) but the motherboards have been just rock-steady for me.
Most subtle Billy Joel reference ever. I tip my hat to you, good sir.
It's to stop the incessant crapfloods that have been hitting a lot of stories lately, crapfloods that are being lauched through valid registered user accounts.
And you don't get the "captcha" if you've got excellent karma.
I guess you haven't been reading the news recently...it doesn't seem to be working for W. too well at all recently.
The public may be stupid, but we've started to notice that war, organized state religion, and killing minority rights in Congress isn't filling our gas tanks, generating jobs, making the stock market rise, or bringing Seinfeld back.
It's not working for W. It's REALLY not working for Microsft anymore. You can smell the desperation from both Ballmer and Gates recently...I wonder what they know that we don't?
Microsoft has never done anything but get involved in social issues. Who the fuck does Ballmer think he's kidding?
Microsoft has bought wholesale into the media-generated myth that religious issues matter to the majority of the populace, and made a conscious decision to allow a vocal but fundamentally powerless minority to dictate their corporate policy. Unbelievable.
What the courts couldn't do, a member of the American Taliban managed to accomplish with a few meetings and one veiled threat. I'm horrified, yet impressed as well.
Nowhere in TFA does anyone call for making users of GPL'd software pay for using it. Nothing in the article even implies that, much less states it explicitly.
I'm no Slashdot basher, far from it. But this it hands down the worst summary I've ever seen on this site.
Damn, I'm in exactly the same musician boat as you are. Former pro, no rights to anything I worked on in the past. The terms of the contract weren't merely onerous: We received 5% of NET revenue, with all production expenses to be repaid.
You do the math, dear reader. For every one million dollars of revenue received by the record company, we got $50,000, to be split four ways. And we had to repay the recording, production and artwork expenses (also note we couldn't shop around to get the best rates on these things, either...we had to use the facilities that the company mandated).
In my book, that's nothing but slavery.
I love the responses I get when I bring this up: "You shouldn't have signed a contract like that". You're right, I should have worked at McDonalds instead. FOR THE MUSICIAN, THE OPTION IS SIGN OR DON'T WORK. People don't understand. "Monopoly" is not a strong enough word for it, and neither is "stranglehold".
The artists are not getting ripped off from file sharing. We got ripped off a long time ago, and it wasn't by our listeners.
All copyright does is insure that I'll NEVER make any money off my work. That privilege belongs to the record company, which will own and profit from MY work for the rest of my life plus some number of years afterwards.
You tell me...is this fair? Is this how copyright is supposed to work? Because to me it looks like someone stole from me and it's perfectly legal.
Yeah, with the huge exception that they are using money taken from you by threat of force to pay for this service for "everyone." This will lead to some people paying for wifi twice, and some people paying for it but not even needing or using it.
Ha! That's kinda the same way I feel about roads. I've ridden a bike for the last six years and don't own a car, but I still have to pay for roads and traffic infrastructure that I don't use and that in some cases works directly against my best interests as a rider.
I get where you're coming from, but I just don't agree with your stance. Were I to take your position on wi-fi towards roads, I'd be morally right to do so. I don't use them and have to pay for someone else to benefit by them. Unfair? To me, absolutely. To society at large? I'm pretty sure that society, in order to exist in its present form, needs roads.
I probably wouldn't use wi-fi very much were it a free municipal service, much the same as I don't use libraries very often. But it's nice to have the option, and municipal wi-fi strikes me as the kind of thing I'm OK with having my tax dollars spent on. Frankly, I'm a lot more OK with that than with my taxes going to roads and gasoline subsidies.
I don't see anything in any municipal Wi-Fi proposal, anywhere, that says the municipality will be the sole mandatory provider of wireless services. So I'm unclear as to how "the government" obtains a monopoly from these proposals. They're just one provider among many. And since I PAID for the freaking infrastructure, I'd like to see the government I ELECTED have the option to provide service on that infrastructure.
What is clear from the article and legislation being proposed is that SBC doesn't want competitors. Had you read the article, you would have read that there are not "a lot" of Wi-Fi providers duking it our in Texas, but only two, SBC and Verizon. It's quite clear that they want a duopoly, just like they have here in northern San Diego, and they'll spilt the state up between the two of them, just like they have here in Southern California. SBC gets some areas, Verizon gets the rest. There's no locale here where you get to choose between them. It's either one or the other. It's not pretty. High cost and shitty, surly service.
I wish you had a good point with the "do you want the government owning your ISP" argument, but sadly every ISP in America seems more than willing to comply with any government request for information or restrictions, legal or not. I just can't see how it would make any difference who my provider is, government or private, as they all operate under the same rules and restrictions.
Sadly, I can think of at least clear benefit from "the government" owning my ISP, in that they have little financial incentive to harvest and sell information about my browsing and buying habits as so many ISPs do.
Thanks for posting those links. I honestly wouldn't have believed such a thing existed otherwise. Orwellian indeed.
Good God, this may be the most depressing thing I've ever read.
This bill is no different then, let's say, forbidding the citizens of a municipality from forming their own fire department...and making only one company the legal provider of "fire protection services".
In short, SBC is asking the state of Texas to provide them with a legally-approved monopoly. And the state is doing it.
When does this stop? When will citizens realize that the very people they're putting in office are signing over every right and interest they have to corporations who has no regard for their health, safety, or welfare? (And I'm hoping that the citizenry is ignorant of what's happening, because if they're not, the notion that people are willing to sign over their democratic rights is too depressing for me to contemplate)
You hit the proverbial nail right on the head, my friend.
"every useful thing will have a patent and we'll have only one option, buy from the patent holder or live without"
This is the ultimate goal of every corporation on the planet. Buy it from them, or live without. Welcome to the brave new world, indeed.
I'd like to introduce you to a little concept called "lying". Come on now, is it really that hard to make up a user name and give them a mailinator address, like I did?
You didn't read TFA, did you? (It's slashdot...why would you?)
What I assume is that my viewing and purchasing habits are my own business and no one else's, and I take steps to make sure it stays that way. Had you read the fine article, you'd realize that I'm in the majority.
There's "too much money" for vendors to use tracking, much as they would like to. The consumers are voting with their actions and their dollars, and are saying loud and clear that they don't like to be tracked and don't want to be tracked. Vendors who don't listen can track all they want, and wonder why it is that sales keep going down...get it?
Smart business people listen to their consumers and give them what they want.
So, until some wackjob legislator decides to make tracking software mandatory, companies can develop all the tracking methods they want. Consumers will demand, and get, tools to disable them.
Your problem (and this wouldn't be problem with a better employer) is that you let yourself get walked on.
I mean no slander by this; I did it too for years. The nice guy who is always up for "helping out" and "going above and beyond the call of duty". Sad to say, but in most places this will get you nothing more than, at best, maybe a little bit of lube before you get bent over. Sometimes they just drill you even harder with no lube. And your current employer is bending you over big time.
I work for a great company now and occasionally feel bad about not going the extra mile and helping out, but I've gotten all my raises just the same and I'm certainly in no danger of getting shitcanned.
And I go home on time.
And I no longer have stomach trouble.
Just do your job. Let someone else be a hero. You'll be getting most of their raise anyway.
I'll bite. Repackaging an open source project to sell is fine, subject basically to several conditions: 1. You make the source code available (I don't know if that's happened here or not). 2. You keep all the original credits for code already written. They are trying to pass it off as their own original work, which is not OK. 3. Anyone who buys it also must agree and abide by the GPL. They're trying to sell it under a different and propietary license. You can't do that either. So, since the company in question refuses to change their violating practices, the developers must sue them. As is the American way, unfortunately.
How is this different from Operation Rescue (self-admitted right-extremists) referring to the Pinellas County police as "Gestapo", "Stormtroopers", and "Nazis"? I don't see any FBI kicking down their front doors.
Apparently you're unfamiliar with a concept known as "freedom of speech".
Most of my fellow Americans are as ignorant, unfortunately.
Oh, I get it! You're trying to equate the rate of the spread of a deadly disease with a court decision on taxation...wait, I don't get it. What exactly is your point? Seriously. I don't understand your comment at all.
Ummm, there's a reason for the cockpit door being where it is. Pilots also like being able to get out of a plane when it's on fire, crashed, that sort of thing.
"a bunch of unqualified amateurs"
Perhaps if they were paid more than your typical McDonalds employee they'd be a bit better than said fast-food dispensers.