Re:Affixing "Gate" to idiotic subjects
on
Obama's "ZuneGate"
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· Score: 1
Amen. Who the hell cares if he uses a Zune or uses Windows or whatever? News flash, a lot of people use Windows. Even a lot of people use Zunes! It already came out that they don't even LET the president use email or a blackberry (OMG NOT AN IPHONE), so he probably won't be using computers much for the next 4 years.
HOW can anyone care about this crap?
I'm sure he asked a staffer to go get him an MP3 player and this is what the guy found at Best Buy or whatever. I'm sure somebody had a windows machine to load it up with tunes. Do you really think Obama-land is a Mac-only shop?? Is there even such a thing as a whole office without ONE windows box??
I would buy a Zune if I used a Windows machine on a regular enough basis to load it.
Australia is quite a ways behind other parts of the world in regards to broadband, but I can still choose between at least five MAJOR providers, and likely fifteen more medium sized ones without any hassles.
That's real nice, mate! But I live in the USA. Guess how broadband works here? A duopoly. If you're lucky. And sorry, you're not winning any points with Americans talking about how this all worked out dandy down in Oz. Guess what? Most people on/. seem to think your broadband sucks worse than ours. If you don't agree, search this article's comments for Australia and see what percentage are "Shut up, here we have a ludicrously low cap!" Also, Australia relies on undersea cables for most of its traffic as someone pointed out because all the content is in EU or US. I'd wager 95% or more of the traffic I consume as an American comes from this continent. Hell, 90% probably originates from Santa Clara County. There's no need--besides greed--to ration bandwidth in this manner.
Where are all your ISPs? Sounds like it's a fantastic market for companies to jump in
Surely you're joking. I have two pipes into my house. One owned by ATT and one owned by Comcast. Cable companies don't share the cable at all anymore (there was a brief regulated period where you could get multiple Cable ISPs but conservative bought politicians let cablecos stop sharing.) Technically you can get an alternative ISP over the phone line, but the same politicians decided it was unfair to require ATT to rent access to other ISPs for a fair price, so your choices are: AT&T DSL: $15-$40 for various speeds of consumer DSL (depending on what speeds they can provide you without upgrading their sorry infrastucture) OR Alternative ISP: $40-80 for the same range because AT&T gets a huge cut of that for the line rental. This is how it is in the entire country. Did I mention that this is the same AT&T that has no plans for Fiber-to-the-premises?
1) Yes, actually there is something that says these limits won't shrink. It's called competition. Blah blah capitalism free market beautiful system Ayn Rand Country First blah blah.
Or both incumbent providers who together control almost all the cable in the ground could, you know, collude anticompetitively to both have terrible caps, and get away with it. Kind of like the way the cell phone carriers get away with all requiring contracts to be a normal postpay customer even if you buy your own phone. (note: I know VZW has sort of stopped this, but how many years did they do this? Class Actions scared them into line, not government regulation.)
2) What about HD? I watch HD tv through either cable or free TV...blah blah piracy is bad.
Oh, you do? That's nice. Many people watch HD content that they pay for over the Internet. Have you heard of iTunes? How about Netflix's online offerings? You want to kill that emerging market because it would be better for ATT/Comcast's bottom line not to have to invest in infrastructure to support progress. Also, I pirate network TV shows over the Internet even though I pay for TV service too--sometimes I forget to DVR something. Recently one member of my family wanted to start watching a show from the beginning, that is in its second season, so I downloaded season 1. I don't watch commercials either way so I don't see how I'm hurting anyone. Color me pirate, I guess, but even if I am that doesn't make people who pay for their content pirates.
I use more and pay less now blah blah
That is irrelevant. Up until Comcast intro'd their cap, I'd have agreed with you--"It's all been getting better up until this point. My argument today is that it peaked and we're going to be paying more in the future for less. Less freedom. Less of what we want, more of what the ISP wants you to have. Your internet connection will be like the late '90s AOL, except when you want to go out to the "www channel" you'll incur additional charges. And capitalism isn't going to do shit when both incumbents pull the same shenanigans. Ha, if you're lucky enough to have two choices and not just one! The best ATT can do at my house in a large city is a theoretical max of 3Mbps whereas my Comcast is (real-world) over 10Mb. So even if ATT was the white knight you are telling capitalist fairytales about, fighting for my business by offering no caps, I'd be faced with good speeds and caps, or sad third-world speeds and no caps. Both of which suck.
I have no problem with partners offering "unmetered downloads" as long as normal content is not filtered/slowed/capped in any way.
HELLO?? No, "normal content" is not "filtered/slowed/capped"-- it's BILLED TO YOU AT A DEAR COST. Gasoline isn't slowed or capped either but you have to pay for it by the gallon.
All they're doing is replacing the "degrading traffic that hasn't been paid for by both sides of the pipe" with "charging a lot of money for said traffic, after a token traffic 'allowance' which we could adjust at our discretion at any time without your consent."
These limits appear high now, but they're planning for the future:
1. Nothing says these limits won't shrink. Maybe 250 becomes 25 but it's ok because we provide A LIBRARY OF 150 FREE ON-DEMAND MOVIES FROM COMCAST STRAIGHT TO YOUR PC! FREE!!! 2. Think about HD. 3. Think about how much bandwidth you use today versus 10 years ago. I'll bet you never thought you could bump up against 10x what you used then. But many people did.
"OK, our standard plan is 250 GB of traffic a month, but if you download movies from us, we don't count it against your limit"? As long as they're not blocking the traffic of competitors and treating all their traffic the same way (IE, their competitors traffic all counts equally against your 250 GB limit), then again, so?
Bollocks bollocks bollocks!
Okay here I will prove why you are dead wrong.
I will try to make a table: Cap / $perGB above cap / Whether it seems harmless 250GB / $2 / Harmless (according to you) 100GB / $5 / Harmless? 50GB / $10 / ?? 1GB / $10 / OH CRAP LOOK HOW MUCH THIS SUCKS
All the ISPs have to do to accomplish that last scenario above is make this their wet dream of extorting all the fun sites like YouTube is to expand their "this bandwidth doesn't count" list to include enough sites (who pay for the honor, of course) that users have *some* place to go inside the walled garden for each service. In 2 years, here's how the Internet will work:
You type in YouTube.com. AT&T Interstitial pops up on your screen "Avoid Overages! Use AT&Tube Powered By Vimeo instead of YouTube. It's just as good, but FREE and only for AT&T subscribers! * You can click HERE to continue to YouTube. Your usage will count toward your 1GB allowance. Further usage will be billed at $10/GB. Watching a typical video may cost you up to $1. Terms and conditions apply. See your 3-year user contract for details."
AT&T will have iTunes, Comcast will have Rhapsody. Time Warner will have Napster. Netflix will probably not have the clout to convince any ISP to forego pay-per-view sales by allowing unmetered access to it so they'll go under. Amazon will pay one or both of them if they want to stay in the download business.
No one will be able to afford to use non-ISP-affiliated services because they know they will exceed their cap.
Whoever pays AT&T will end up on the "free bandwidth" list, whoever doesn't will be in "ZOMG OVERAGE" land, and users will actually demand the interstitial warnings so they don't unknowingly run up a $5000 "long-distance-internet" bill.
It will be EXACTLY like making phone calls used to be before unlimited long distance became commonplace. Every call you have to check the number carefully to see if it's in your local free calling area or else you have no idea what to expect.
If you disagree, please explain exactly why they wouldn't do what I describe. And if you say customers will leave them for the competition, please punch yourself in the face since there's usually only 2 choices available to you and they will BOTH be doing this--as this article demonstrates.
When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. "I am innocent of this man's blood," he said. "It is your responsibility!"
All the people answered, "Let his blood be on us and on our children!"
How free would you feel if you were "free to marry someone, as long as they're of the same sex"? Would knowing that you had that oh-so-cleverly-worded "equal right to marry someone of the same sex" freedom make you feel all better about never being allowed to get married just because you don't fancy dudes?
(My apologies and please reverse the genders of my comment if you're a woman).
the phone you've chosen at the moment doesn't quite cut it, you can just provide a more powerful phone later, because S60 is going to be around a long time. You can keep going forward with the same software.
Do you REALLY think that Apple will break App Store app compatibility? Especially in that direction. Consider:
Apple made App Store retroactive (so to speak) to the EDGE-based original iphone. This definitely cost them sales of the 3G since if they hadn't, probably some people who have kept their old iPhones would have ebayed 'em and bought the 3G if they couldn't use the App Store on them.
I bring this up because Apple already did the profit-hurting compatibility preservation, they will obviously do the profit-helping one i describe next:
If Apple makes a more powerful phone in 24 months, which they no doubt will, and wants to add new features to the API for 3rd party apps they would have every incentive to make it run every App Store app flawlessly by continuing to support all of the old API. And this is FAR more likely to happen on iPhone platform, which is slightly tweaked Real Desktop OS (R) than it is on some embedded OS like Symbian or CE. Not doing so would provide a DISincentive to you and me to buy the new phone ("It's nice but i'd lose some/all my apps!")
So I dispute that Symbian is a _more_ stable platform likely to be supported in the future. Perhaps it will be equally stable, but it is very doubtful to be more stable considering the size of the two install bases (and by "size" let's say i mean the install base of Symbian users who know what Symbian is and have installed at least 1 third-party app on their phone...since the rest wouldn't care about an API-breaking OS upgrade on the next phone model).
I love OSS, but the only thing you'd really gain from the Nokia platform is Linux compatibility, and out of a whole class of students i'm sorry but you're just not going to find enough of them that know what Linux is. I'm sorry, but all the developers writing stuff on the app store seem to think it's an easy platform to develop for, rather than the scary undocumented mess you portray it as.
Even if you do have a couple of Linux-loving students, iPhones aren't really all that dependent on syncing with computers. Almost everything can be done OTA. The only exception besides activation (which they do for you now) is loading on your own music besides iTunes store purchases, and I assume that's not really a worry for the university since mp3 playing is not a main goal of the project. The Linux kids can borrow a friend's windows box for periodic music updates, or use some free OSS tool that will no doubt eventually emerge.
By comparison, probably 99% of any group of students given the phone you suggest, would never even know how to sync it with their computer, based on my experience with everyone i know that has a phone.
In conclusion: iPhones/iPod Touch: 100% can use, 99% can sync Nokia: 100% can use, 100% CAN sync in theory, 1-2% will figure out how to sync.
You spoiled asshole, you have TWO cable companies to choose from? Newsflash: Probably 90% of the country has one cable company to choose from and MAYBE one DSL provider. Many rural areas have no broadband choice at all. How about showing a little appreciation for what competition you do have./Not really calling you an asshole, just jealous...
Yeah that's completely not true. For any normal car, new, you pay more for an automatic. Don't know about fancy performance type cars though, where the stick shift might be part of an expensive "extra performance" package.
HIring policies that outright prohibit smoking would be wrong (ethically--don't ask me about the law) for the same reason hiring policies that prohibit contributing to Free Software, or prohibit watching porn, would be wrong. These are all things that you might do either at work, or only in your off-hours. If you're not on the clock, your employer doesn't have the right to tell you what to do. Therefore, while the company has the right to demand that you refrain from these things while on company time and premises, once you walk out that door they have no right to know or regulate what you do.
Smoking is interesting of course because most smokers find it tough to go eight hours without a cigarette. Porn and kernel hacking are not quite as irresistible. This would, of course, give you ample ethical grounds for making "not smoking while on company time or premises" an acceptable criteria for hiring, and you'd probably find that all but the lightest smokers would look elsewhere for employment.
He should be executed. Spamming is incredibly antisocial behavior that threatens to undermine our entire network infrastructure that makes the world work today. They will NEVER, EVER stop unless they are brought down. And hard.
I actually would, with a straight face and not a shred of remorse, support a death penalty for spammers. Even though I don't think it's necessary for any other crime.
I literally think we should wipe them all from the face of the earth. Painfully, too--not humanely or peacefully.
Since we can't realistically hope for this--our world is far more civilized than the spammers deserve--I think a "harsh" sentence is the next best thing. We can hope that it might be a deterrent if we start locking up large numbers of them for 25 years apiece. At least. Or just tie it to their spammer tenure. How about this. You get 5 years in prison for every year you've been spamming. So for spammers who've been spamming since 1992 that's basically a life sentence. If you object to this, then please tell me how you think it's better for society for these bottom-feeders to continue as free men. They obviously aren't interested in contributing anything, that's why they do what they do. So why would letting them off motivate them to suddenly turn their lives around? It would be cheaper for us to pay for their gruel and poor dental care than the anti-spam software.
I always say that going to the hospital is like going into a car dealership and saying "I'm having a hard time getting around town. Do whatever you think is best for me and I'll be sure and pay whatever you tell me it's worth. In fact, here, let me write you a blank check now before you even estimate the costs."
Hmm... An interesting add-on I had not looked at before. However as far as using the address bar to show the destination of a link, that bothers me. Then your scammer will make the whole page a giant link to http://www.realbank.com/ so wherever your cursor is you'd see realbank.com in your address bar. Of course they'd add return false JS handlers to prevent a click from triggering said link.
I still think just using the status bar is the best idea, and it's not tough to find in Safari. View>Status bar. Not even a nested menu. I can't say I agree with Apple's decision to hide it by default, any more than I like how Windows XP's Windows Explorer (not IE) status bar is hidden, but I can't manage to get mad over a preference setting that's so easily changed by anyone with clue enough to look for the status bar.
Perhaps an auto-hiding status bar would be the truly best solution... sliding up from the bottom of the window whenever you mouseover a link, and disappearing to save space when it'd just be empty.
Oh come on, you've gotta include Israel in that list.
The GP has a perfectly good point though. We didn't trade with the USSR. We still don't trade with Cuba and they're harmless! We are the biggest hypocrites ever for trading with China, who has a human rights and oppression record that Stalin or Castro would admire, and we ignore that it's in China's best interests to destroy us to make oil cheaper for them.
Safari does show me a URL before I click it. In the status bar. Just like every other browser. When I have a link in Mail, the tooltip tells me. And I don't give a crap about Apple not showing the status bar by default. And most users don't know what the status bar is anyway and don't even look for the URL on mouseover one way or another. I guess Apple decided anyone who didn't look at the SB anyway wouldn't miss it.
The only anti-phishing browser that's guaranteed to work would have to work like MSIE's or Firefox in their "active" mode, the one where they send every URL you visit to MS or Google to ask permission. That's simply not worth the privacy (and abuse potential) implications of this action. ("Sorry, the site "getfirefox.com" might be a phishing site. You're not allowed to go there." How many USERS would stop right there and decide maybe FF isn't so legit?)
In the "blacklist" mode these silly add-ons are not likely to be nearly as safe as just having a clue.
I don't need a phishing filter and I don't WANT a phishing filter. I'm a big boy who can read URLs just fine, thanks. I don't get to sensitive sites by untrusted links. I use my fingers to type the URL or I use a bookmark.
I also don't need Norton Internet Security, or anti-spyware apps, on my Mac OR on my PC--because I don't install trash downloaded from the Internet willy-nilly.
Aside from this worthless argument, no one has explained how Safari is any less secure than Firefox or MSIE.
Slashdot Mirror
Amen. Who the hell cares if he uses a Zune or uses Windows or whatever? News flash, a lot of people use Windows. Even a lot of people use Zunes! It already came out that they don't even LET the president use email or a blackberry (OMG NOT AN IPHONE), so he probably won't be using computers much for the next 4 years.
HOW can anyone care about this crap?
I'm sure he asked a staffer to go get him an MP3 player and this is what the guy found at Best Buy or whatever. I'm sure somebody had a windows machine to load it up with tunes. Do you really think Obama-land is a Mac-only shop?? Is there even such a thing as a whole office without ONE windows box??
I would buy a Zune if I used a Windows machine on a regular enough basis to load it.
That's real nice, mate! But I live in the USA. Guess how broadband works here? A duopoly. If you're lucky. And sorry, you're not winning any points with Americans talking about how this all worked out dandy down in Oz. Guess what? Most people on /. seem to think your broadband sucks worse than ours. If you don't agree, search this article's comments for Australia and see what percentage are "Shut up, here we have a ludicrously low cap!" Also, Australia relies on undersea cables for most of its traffic as someone pointed out because all the content is in EU or US. I'd wager 95% or more of the traffic I consume as an American comes from this continent. Hell, 90% probably originates from Santa Clara County. There's no need--besides greed--to ration bandwidth in this manner.
Surely you're joking. I have two pipes into my house. One owned by ATT and one owned by Comcast. Cable companies don't share the cable at all anymore (there was a brief regulated period where you could get multiple Cable ISPs but conservative bought politicians let cablecos stop sharing.) Technically you can get an alternative ISP over the phone line, but the same politicians decided it was unfair to require ATT to rent access to other ISPs for a fair price, so your choices are: AT&T DSL: $15-$40 for various speeds of consumer DSL (depending on what speeds they can provide you without upgrading their sorry infrastucture) OR Alternative ISP: $40-80 for the same range because AT&T gets a huge cut of that for the line rental. This is how it is in the entire country. Did I mention that this is the same AT&T that has no plans for Fiber-to-the-premises?
What you say = Net Neutrality. I agree.
Or both incumbent providers who together control almost all the cable in the ground could, you know, collude anticompetitively to both have terrible caps, and get away with it. Kind of like the way the cell phone carriers get away with all requiring contracts to be a normal postpay customer even if you buy your own phone. (note: I know VZW has sort of stopped this, but how many years did they do this? Class Actions scared them into line, not government regulation.)
Oh, you do? That's nice. Many people watch HD content that they pay for over the Internet. Have you heard of iTunes? How about Netflix's online offerings? You want to kill that emerging market because it would be better for ATT/Comcast's bottom line not to have to invest in infrastructure to support progress. Also, I pirate network TV shows over the Internet even though I pay for TV service too--sometimes I forget to DVR something. Recently one member of my family wanted to start watching a show from the beginning, that is in its second season, so I downloaded season 1. I don't watch commercials either way so I don't see how I'm hurting anyone. Color me pirate, I guess, but even if I am that doesn't make people who pay for their content pirates.
That is irrelevant. Up until Comcast intro'd their cap, I'd have agreed with you--"It's all been getting better up until this point. My argument today is that it peaked and we're going to be paying more in the future for less. Less freedom. Less of what we want, more of what the ISP wants you to have. Your internet connection will be like the late '90s AOL, except when you want to go out to the "www channel" you'll incur additional charges. And capitalism isn't going to do shit when both incumbents pull the same shenanigans. Ha, if you're lucky enough to have two choices and not just one! The best ATT can do at my house in a large city is a theoretical max of 3Mbps whereas my Comcast is (real-world) over 10Mb. So even if ATT was the white knight you are telling capitalist fairytales about, fighting for my business by offering no caps, I'd be faced with good speeds and caps, or sad third-world speeds and no caps. Both of which suck.
HELLO?? No, "normal content" is not "filtered/slowed/capped"-- it's BILLED TO YOU AT A DEAR COST. Gasoline isn't slowed or capped either but you have to pay for it by the gallon.
All they're doing is replacing the "degrading traffic that hasn't been paid for by both sides of the pipe" with "charging a lot of money for said traffic, after a token traffic 'allowance' which we could adjust at our discretion at any time without your consent."
These limits appear high now, but they're planning for the future:
1. Nothing says these limits won't shrink. Maybe 250 becomes 25 but it's ok because we provide A LIBRARY OF 150 FREE ON-DEMAND MOVIES FROM COMCAST STRAIGHT TO YOUR PC! FREE!!!
2. Think about HD.
3. Think about how much bandwidth you use today versus 10 years ago. I'll bet you never thought you could bump up against 10x what you used then. But many people did.
Bollocks bollocks bollocks!
Okay here I will prove why you are dead wrong.
I will try to make a table:
Cap / $perGB above cap / Whether it seems harmless
250GB / $2 / Harmless (according to you)
100GB / $5 / Harmless?
50GB / $10 / ??
1GB / $10 / OH CRAP LOOK HOW MUCH THIS SUCKS
All the ISPs have to do to accomplish that last scenario above is make this their wet dream of extorting all the fun sites like YouTube is to expand their "this bandwidth doesn't count" list to include enough sites (who pay for the honor, of course) that users have *some* place to go inside the walled garden for each service. In 2 years, here's how the Internet will work:
You type in YouTube.com.
AT&T Interstitial pops up on your screen "Avoid Overages! Use AT&Tube Powered By Vimeo instead of YouTube. It's just as good, but FREE and only for AT&T subscribers! * You can click HERE to continue to YouTube. Your usage will count toward your 1GB allowance. Further usage will be billed at $10/GB. Watching a typical video may cost you up to $1. Terms and conditions apply. See your 3-year user contract for details."
AT&T will have iTunes, Comcast will have Rhapsody. Time Warner will have Napster. Netflix will probably not have the clout to convince any ISP to forego pay-per-view sales by allowing unmetered access to it so they'll go under. Amazon will pay one or both of them if they want to stay in the download business.
No one will be able to afford to use non-ISP-affiliated services because they know they will exceed their cap.
Whoever pays AT&T will end up on the "free bandwidth" list, whoever doesn't will be in "ZOMG OVERAGE" land, and users will actually demand the interstitial warnings so they don't unknowingly run up a $5000 "long-distance-internet" bill.
It will be EXACTLY like making phone calls used to be before unlimited long distance became commonplace. Every call you have to check the number carefully to see if it's in your local free calling area or else you have no idea what to expect.
If you disagree, please explain exactly why they wouldn't do what I describe. And if you say customers will leave them for the competition, please punch yourself in the face since there's usually only 2 choices available to you and they will BOTH be doing this--as this article demonstrates.
Tell that to these guys:
When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. "I am innocent of this man's blood," he said. "It is your responsibility!"
All the people answered, "Let his blood be on us and on our children!"
Matthew 27:24-25
*Oh, come on, don't forget your sense of humor!
How free would you feel if you were "free to marry someone, as long as they're of the same sex"? Would knowing that you had that oh-so-cleverly-worded "equal right to marry someone of the same sex" freedom make you feel all better about never being allowed to get married just because you don't fancy dudes?
(My apologies and please reverse the genders of my comment if you're a woman).
Sorry, forgot to mention:
Do you REALLY think that Apple will break App Store app compatibility? Especially in that direction. Consider:
Apple made App Store retroactive (so to speak) to the EDGE-based original iphone. This definitely cost them sales of the 3G since if they hadn't, probably some people who have kept their old iPhones would have ebayed 'em and bought the 3G if they couldn't use the App Store on them.
I bring this up because Apple already did the profit-hurting compatibility preservation, they will obviously do the profit-helping one i describe next:
If Apple makes a more powerful phone in 24 months, which they no doubt will, and wants to add new features to the API for 3rd party apps they would have every incentive to make it run every App Store app flawlessly by continuing to support all of the old API. And this is FAR more likely to happen on iPhone platform, which is slightly tweaked Real Desktop OS (R) than it is on some embedded OS like Symbian or CE. Not doing so would provide a DISincentive to you and me to buy the new phone ("It's nice but i'd lose some/all my apps!")
So I dispute that Symbian is a _more_ stable platform likely to be supported in the future. Perhaps it will be equally stable, but it is very doubtful to be more stable considering the size of the two install bases (and by "size" let's say i mean the install base of Symbian users who know what Symbian is and have installed at least 1 third-party app on their phone...since the rest wouldn't care about an API-breaking OS upgrade on the next phone model).
I love OSS, but the only thing you'd really gain from the Nokia platform is Linux compatibility, and out of a whole class of students i'm sorry but you're just not going to find enough of them that know what Linux is. I'm sorry, but all the developers writing stuff on the app store seem to think it's an easy platform to develop for, rather than the scary undocumented mess you portray it as.
Even if you do have a couple of Linux-loving students, iPhones aren't really all that dependent on syncing with computers. Almost everything can be done OTA. The only exception besides activation (which they do for you now) is loading on your own music besides iTunes store purchases, and I assume that's not really a worry for the university since mp3 playing is not a main goal of the project. The Linux kids can borrow a friend's windows box for periodic music updates, or use some free OSS tool that will no doubt eventually emerge.
By comparison, probably 99% of any group of students given the phone you suggest, would never even know how to sync it with their computer, based on my experience with everyone i know that has a phone.
In conclusion:
iPhones/iPod Touch: 100% can use, 99% can sync
Nokia: 100% can use, 100% CAN sync in theory, 1-2% will figure out how to sync.
you mean DoC: Denial of College.
You spoiled asshole, you have TWO cable companies to choose from? Newsflash: Probably 90% of the country has one cable company to choose from and MAYBE one DSL provider. Many rural areas have no broadband choice at all. How about showing a little appreciation for what competition you do have. /Not really calling you an asshole, just jealous...
Aha, this explains why even though I never use those Y-cables with my external 2.5" hard drives, I've never had a problem with them.
Stupid Motorola.
Man, i love that image. Replace all those blue vests with PRC military uniforms.
Yeah that's completely not true. For any normal car, new, you pay more for an automatic. Don't know about fancy performance type cars though, where the stick shift might be part of an expensive "extra performance" package.
HIring policies that outright prohibit smoking would be wrong (ethically--don't ask me about the law) for the same reason hiring policies that prohibit contributing to Free Software, or prohibit watching porn, would be wrong. These are all things that you might do either at work, or only in your off-hours. If you're not on the clock, your employer doesn't have the right to tell you what to do. Therefore, while the company has the right to demand that you refrain from these things while on company time and premises, once you walk out that door they have no right to know or regulate what you do.
Smoking is interesting of course because most smokers find it tough to go eight hours without a cigarette. Porn and kernel hacking are not quite as irresistible. This would, of course, give you ample ethical grounds for making "not smoking while on company time or premises" an acceptable criteria for hiring, and you'd probably find that all but the lightest smokers would look elsewhere for employment.
Seriously? You think nine years is too harsh?
He should be executed. Spamming is incredibly antisocial behavior that threatens to undermine our entire network infrastructure that makes the world work today. They will NEVER, EVER stop unless they are brought down. And hard.
I actually would, with a straight face and not a shred of remorse, support a death penalty for spammers. Even though I don't think it's necessary for any other crime.
I literally think we should wipe them all from the face of the earth. Painfully, too--not humanely or peacefully.
Since we can't realistically hope for this--our world is far more civilized than the spammers deserve--I think a "harsh" sentence is the next best thing. We can hope that it might be a deterrent if we start locking up large numbers of them for 25 years apiece. At least. Or just tie it to their spammer tenure. How about this. You get 5 years in prison for every year you've been spamming. So for spammers who've been spamming since 1992 that's basically a life sentence. If you object to this, then please tell me how you think it's better for society for these bottom-feeders to continue as free men. They obviously aren't interested in contributing anything, that's why they do what they do. So why would letting them off motivate them to suddenly turn their lives around? It would be cheaper for us to pay for their gruel and poor dental care than the anti-spam software.
Amen to your last paragraph.
I always say that going to the hospital is like going into a car dealership and saying "I'm having a hard time getting around town. Do whatever you think is best for me and I'll be sure and pay whatever you tell me it's worth. In fact, here, let me write you a blank check now before you even estimate the costs."
God damn do I hate the medical industry.
A cheap Ass-Linux laptop?
Hmm... An interesting add-on I had not looked at before. However as far as using the address bar to show the destination of a link, that bothers me. Then your scammer will make the whole page a giant link to http://www.realbank.com/ so wherever your cursor is you'd see realbank.com in your address bar. Of course they'd add return false JS handlers to prevent a click from triggering said link.
I still think just using the status bar is the best idea, and it's not tough to find in Safari. View>Status bar. Not even a nested menu. I can't say I agree with Apple's decision to hide it by default, any more than I like how Windows XP's Windows Explorer (not IE) status bar is hidden, but I can't manage to get mad over a preference setting that's so easily changed by anyone with clue enough to look for the status bar.
Perhaps an auto-hiding status bar would be the truly best solution... sliding up from the bottom of the window whenever you mouseover a link, and disappearing to save space when it'd just be empty.
Oh come on, you've gotta include Israel in that list.
The GP has a perfectly good point though. We didn't trade with the USSR. We still don't trade with Cuba and they're harmless! We are the biggest hypocrites ever for trading with China, who has a human rights and oppression record that Stalin or Castro would admire, and we ignore that it's in China's best interests to destroy us to make oil cheaper for them.
Safari does show me a URL before I click it. In the status bar. Just like every other browser. When I have a link in Mail, the tooltip tells me. And I don't give a crap about Apple not showing the status bar by default. And most users don't know what the status bar is anyway and don't even look for the URL on mouseover one way or another. I guess Apple decided anyone who didn't look at the SB anyway wouldn't miss it.
The only anti-phishing browser that's guaranteed to work would have to work like MSIE's or Firefox in their "active" mode, the one where they send every URL you visit to MS or Google to ask permission. That's simply not worth the privacy (and abuse potential) implications of this action. ("Sorry, the site "getfirefox.com" might be a phishing site. You're not allowed to go there." How many USERS would stop right there and decide maybe FF isn't so legit?)
In the "blacklist" mode these silly add-ons are not likely to be nearly as safe as just having a clue.
Oh stuff it.
I don't need a phishing filter and I don't WANT a phishing filter. I'm a big boy who can read URLs just fine, thanks. I don't get to sensitive sites by untrusted links. I use my fingers to type the URL or I use a bookmark.
I also don't need Norton Internet Security, or anti-spyware apps, on my Mac OR on my PC--because I don't install trash downloaded from the Internet willy-nilly.
Aside from this worthless argument, no one has explained how Safari is any less secure than Firefox or MSIE.