If Larry Flint can publish in his magazine a cartoon showing Jerry Falwell having sex in an out house with him mom, and that he liked fucking goats, then anything is protected speech.
The music is a part of the parody. I think they are saying how absurd politics are. But that is my take on it.
Okay, so what do you do?
on
Are You Annoying?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Do you tell IT insider jokes that users don't understand? Do you sprinkle technical jargon through discussions with business people?
Annoying behaviors are tricky because what annoys one person may sail by another. "You can say the same thing the same way to two people, and one person will say, 'Damn, that's annoying,' and the other person will not think anything of it,"
So what do you do? Keep the conversation dumbed down, filled with small talk? I always laughed at the comercials for television shows that said "we'll be talked about at the water cooler tomorrow, make sure you're not the one that misses it". Maybe that is what most people want? I don't buy it.
I try and not talk above anyone. But I don't want to talk down to people either. My solution is to explain things in the simplest way. It is like when I was in college and I knew this one guy who was smart. But I would never ask him for help with anything because he always made things 100 times more complex than it was just to show everyone how much smarter he was. Nobody liked him, not even other nerds. Lets call him Steve for arguments sake. If anyone asked Steve for help, even something as simple as 2+2, Steve would decide that calculus was needed to solve that problem. He then talked so fast, most of the time, to make sure you could not keep up. When Steve saw the confused look on the persons face, a grin would form on his face and he would slow down long enough to mockingly ask "can you follow this, it is really tough stuff you know, so hard". And you could never send him an email without getting it back, grammer corrected. What a prick.
I guess my advice is don't be Steve. Don't be that guy.
What relevance does this have to anything? Even if that's true, did the senator have anything to do with this deal?
senator hatch is the one who sponsered the legislation to take away everyones rights to share music. hiring his son is a valid critisism. there is a conflict of interest. we don't let senators work for lobbying firms when they leave congress for the first few years, so why would we let their children work as lobbyists. seems unethical. who would be a greater influance in how a senator votes? a former senator selling them on some legislation, or their own children who's salary depends on what their father does?
i agree with you. and some of those fees should not be allowed. for example, the athletic fee. doesn't the athletic department make money off the football games and sports? why pay a coach millions of dollars at the college level? is it a sports vocational school or a university?
my school had a $1 charge per credit hour, that went to a scholarship fund for minority students. nobody bothered to ever ask about it. so i decided to ask, and the school said it went to black and hispanic students to pay their tuition. i had to work a job while in college. i told them i did not want to pay that fee, and they looked at me like i was a racist. why don't they not automatically charge those fees but ask if you are interested in contributing instead.
while i understand that collective buying by the entire student body can drastically lower prices of certain services, should students have a right to say if they want to be included? or is there some special payment made to school officials, some dirty agreements? i can't help but wonder as i walk down the halls of a college that only offers pepsi products in vending machines, at the cost of $1 a can, $1.35 for a plastic bottle? i guess they need the revenue to pay the administrators their $200,000 a year salary.
but the first year trial of the service has been donated by an anonymous donor
i would not be suprised if this anonyous donor was napster itself, trying to set a precedent so other schools will subscribe. i can't help but think of the stripped down version of windows microsoft is peddeling in asia, or how they give out free copies of its operating system once a government decides to go open source.
But GWU officials are turning to the Napster service less as a means of wooing prospective students than as a way to tackle the technological and ethical crises posed by the downloading revolution
since when did this turn into a "crisis"? once again, the rhetoric is being rased by the same people who want to take away your right to back up music, share music, or make copies. the same people who illegally inflated the price of cd's, to which they were sued and lost. since they lost in the courthouse, they have been buying politicians in the congress. am i wrong? didn't they hire senator orin hatch's son?
Although the subscriptions will allow them to listen to as much music as they want for free through their computers, they will have to pay 99 cents for any song they copy onto a compact disc or portable music player
are you kidding me? can't people already buy music for 99 cents a song anywhere else? what are they paying for?
Those criteria can make anything a sport. For example, by your criteria, masturbation can be a sport. I know people who have been training in masturbation for years. They do it every day. They progress and get better at it. No more of the right hand only, then use the left hand too, and upside down. They can even postpone ejaculation. And yes, some people are more naturally gifted at masturbating than others. But do we want to call it a sport?
You are missing one of the main criteria for sports. You have to be able to stop someone else from scoring or getting what they want. In all games, there is a defense for the offense. What can you defensivly do to stop someone in math?
Math is not a sport...
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Is Math A Sport?
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· Score: 1, Redundant
I don't think something is a sport unless there is some physical activity involved. Unless you are activly doing something with your body, and it is against someone else, then it is not a sport.
That is why I would classify something like ping pong as a sport. You have an opponent and you have to use your body to win. You move your legs to get you in place to make a shot, and you use your hands to add touch to the shot.
Math is not a sport. And you can't really have an oponent the way you can in real sports. How is the opponent going to stop you? In football cornerbacks try and stop wide recievers. In basketball people are gaurded. In baseball the pitcher trys to make you miss the pitch. What can your opponent do do in math? Nothing. Chess might be more arguable because the opponent can make moves to open up traps for you.
However, Gates stopped short at saying that Windows XP Starter Edition--available in Malaysia and Thailand in September--is Microsoft's attempt to stop the spread of Linux software and software piracy in the region.
Gates is showing once and again that he is a smart guy who will take any advantage he can to get what he wants.
I remember a settlement Microsoft made with some school district. But instead of sending a check to the school, Microsoft offered them computers with the windows operating system. By negotiating a settlement in such a way, it is like getting free advertising. Most people do not want to learn 2 or 3 operating systems, they just want one they know how to use. How many of those high school students went on to use Windows based PC's in college and beyond? I don't know the anwser, but I do bet some would have used Apple if they had Apple computers in their lab.
I think the problem with Gates and Microsoft is they are unethical. It is one thing to make a product and sell it, another thing to use strong arm tactics to force people to use it. It has been said many times, but my local CompUSA and Circuit City only sell computers with Windows on them. And what is worse, my Sony Vaio laptop came with Windows, but not the CD to install it as I wish. Instead it reformats the hard drive into pre-determined partitions. And I can not pick what programs to install from that CD, it installs everything as it was when I first turned the laptop on. Getting some of that unwanted software off the PC was real work. Yuck.
But there are things Gates can do to be more friendly. Don't force windows to want a whole drive all to itself. If I have drive, and want to have a small partition for linux, don't force windows to reformat that partition to ntsc or fat. Let it be. It is a pain to have to do everything after windows is installed.
I think Bill Gates is obsessed with controlling the entire market share for computer operating systems, and now is moving into media control with his DRM technology and windows media player 9. What people really want is choice. What Windows does is take away choice.
Also from the article, and this scares me:
Earlier, Gates talked about the contributions Windows has made to the Asian economy. "Windows has opened up opportunities for computers and chips to be built in Asia. This will continue to be true for [such] software in providing high-paying jobs," he said.
Can we expect many of these high paying jobs to leave the USA? Is this Gates master plan. Make the USA dependant on Windows based software, then move as much of the production outside the USA?
Also:
Gates said Microsoft is having "good dialogues" with Asian governments, one area being their loss of tax revenue "when people don't pay for software".
Does this mean Gates will want some terrif imposed on all software, then work out some exemption for Microsoft? He has proven to be smart and creative in making thinks work out the way he wants it to, and he has proven to be unethical. I would not be suprised if he tried to stifle competition.
I thought he went to jail for doing this? I would have thought part of his release deal would have included not speaking about hacking and not associating with hackers. I remember from a political science class being told that most drug dealers who get released do so on the condition they will not associate with anyone known who is also a criminal. One guy who got caught at school using a computer for illegal purposes (and prosecuted) got a reduced sentance to two years probation and part of the deal was he could not use a computer.
What I hope the next step is that schools start using these on-line courses to award credit. It seems to me that everything is in place, and works without very much cost, or at least less cost than going to a classroom (if they can put the class notes on the web for free, how much more would it cost to add some test and record the scores?). It would be a great public service for people stuck in low paying jobs to be able to take some for_credit classes, without the pressure of having to go to a class with many younger people and feeling out of place. With tuition going up 10% a year, there needs to be a cheap alternative.
It is too bad that money is often what makes a person make a decision which puts them on a path in life where the person is not happy. I remember reading the magazines in college which ranked pay by degree. If only I would have stayed studying what trully excited and interested me- biology. I was facsinated with the possibility of genetic engineering as a method of solving disease and sickness. Now I do programming work when I find it, or other office work, and I hate it. Why? Because I decided to follow the money not realizing money does not give happiness and often what is a hot job/field today will not be in 5 years. Plus, who wants to excel at something they hate doing. You know, the kind of job where by lunch you want to go home.
Last fall the president of the University of Maryland found himself doing something that none of his predecessors would have dreamed of trying. While on a trip to Taiwan, C. Dan Mote Jr. spent part of his time recruiting Taiwanese students to go to the United States for graduate school.
There should be no reason to recruit outside the USA for PhD programs. We should be able to have a good pool of undergrads in the USA to fill almost every PhD seat.
I think the fix to the problem is not undergraduate education or high schools, but what is taught in the elementary schools. I knew two people in elementary/high school who went on to get PhD's. One was a person who was always entering science fairs and was excited and interested in discovery. The father of that guy never pushed the kid to "excel", but allowed the kid to feed his appetite of wonder. The other guy I knew as a kid did not really get excited about learning, but had a dad who pushed and pushed and pushed for his kid to be the best. I can't tell you how many times I remember his father telling him "do you want to push a broomstick the rest of your life?". Both did well in high school, both got into good colleges. The one who was liked studying and did not look at school as work enjoyed his graduate school days. The one who looked at school as another hurdle to jump did not like it, and dropped out early getting a masters (and now works as a programmer because it paid the best, even though he hates it).
I think what needs to be done is schools needs to get fun at an early age. It should not be a pressure filled johnny is better than mike type environment, because johnny did well on some test (only to have mike kick johnnys ass after school). I had only one good teacher in my first 8 years of schooling (before high school), and what made that teacher great was not that he taught better but that he made everyone excited about what they were doing and made everyone feel good about their interests. Those who were interested in fiction books were no less important as people than those who were looking at leaves under a magnifying glass. The teacher always asked with an excited face "how did you like that" and "what did you learn"; and anwsered "wow". It might sound dumb, but he was one hell of a fifth grade teacher. Much better than the guy who taught me algebra in high school who always took off 1/2 a point off a right anwser just to show me who was boss (for shit like "can't read your handwriting").
Best Buy is the most horrible place to buy anything, all they care about is the sale. I once went there to purchase some french tutor application (this is when windows 2000 first came out). On the box it said it was compatible with windows 98/NT. Since the app was made before 2000 came out, I figured NT and 2000 would be compatible, but just to make sure I asked a sales associate. He said anything made for NT would run on 2000. I purchased it, it did not work on 2000 (I got a dll error when running the exe file), and I went to return it. They would not return it, and threatened me that I was a pirate or thief or something really bad. After asking to speak to a manager, two big guys in yellow shirts came up to me and told me they would hold me for the police if I continued to try and return the product. One of the computer tech's who was listening in started laughing at me, and yelled out "NT is not 2000, it's on the box, can't you read". I guess nobody heard a word I was saying. Since then I have never purchased anything from Best Buy. Oh, and a friend of mine got screwed there too. He purchased one of those extended warrenties on a HP computer. The computer kept freezing up (it was running windows ME). He went to get it fixed, and they told him it would be 3 days. It took two weeks to get it back, and the computer was not fixed. When he went back to ask for an exchange, they told him the hardware was fine and he was on his own. So much for the extended warrenty. I knew it was windows ME doing it, but what could he have done? Best buy did not stand behind their product or their own in-house wareenty.
From the article:
Anderson said Best Buy was tightening its rebate policies in the case of customers who abuse the privilege, but declined to say what else his company was doing to discourage its most costly customers.
There is a simple way to stop mail in rebate fraud. Give the rebate when the sale is made and record it on the reciept. But computer stores will never do this because of how many people forget to mail in the rebate in time. I for one hate mail in rebates, and think it is deceptive for stores to list the price of a product as the price after the rebate (with the rebate listed in small unreadable font). On second thought, I wonder if what he really means is how to screw people from sending in the rebate, like forcing them to print out their own rebates from some website or shortening the time window.
Now while Circuit City is no better with the rebates, at least there they really try and help you with what you buy. I purchased a laptop from them, saw 2 weeks later it was $100 less at another store (on-sale), and went to get the price match. The manager gave me the money plus 10% of the differance with no problems. She told me she was happy I was a customer and looked forward to servicing my needs again. That was good service.
Sony said it has sold more than 330 million Walkmans worldwide, nearly 150 million of them in the United States.
There is a reason Sony sells so well. They make some of the best electronics in the world. I own a Sony TV that has been working for 8 years and never had a problem. Everything I purchased from them has lasted and worked. I pay more for it, but I think it is worth it. Much better than paying 25% less for something that breaks in a year. With Sony I have never purchased an extended warrenty because I feel secure knowing the product was manufactured to last.
As for them opening stores, if they are doing this for marketing (and not profit) I think it is a very smart move. Apple opened a store in a shopping center near me, and it is cool to go and play around with their toys. Plus, the people they hired are trained to be friendly and more playful compared to the "computer store" with the small Mac section in the back and the over stressed salesman. By having their own store, they can have a different buisness model than a store (marketing and advertising their product versus sales).
I think we have every right to determine who/what we are, and if that means examining every corner of the universe for our history then I say do it. For those who have not noticed, it is a cold cruel world out there. And nobody is in agrement like the fabled Federation of Planets (look at the UN where power varies by country might; it is not a division of power where every voice is equally important). The USA founding fathers conquered the indians. Are we better off for it, or should we never have left europe and stayed under the rule of Kings?? The logic which says to not disturb/influance others natural rights does not exsist in nature, where animals eat one another. Why should we act in an un-natural way, personifying some amino acid?
Second, was there a big bang? How did it all happen? These questions are relevent in how we think about our life and morality. Did life form on earth based on what was on earth, or was there some comet which had a fragment with the building blocks of life fall down to earth? What does it mean in terms of our religious beliefs? Perhaps science can bring all people together.
Just like at one point my 8X CD-RW cost $200, I can now get a 52X CD-RW for $35. But who really wants a CD-RW, who longs for one? DVD+/-RW will continue to fall in price, but there is something new just around the corner. Dual Layer DVD's are there, and for those who want to back-up their DVD collection 1 disk to 1 disk will want the Dual Layer DVD+/-RW. There is always something new and better. The question is knowing what to buy and when. I got screwed 10 years ago buying an IBM PC because I beleived the salesperson that microchanel would become a standard and the AT clone machines would all cruble. I could not upgrade that machine because everything was proprietary and cost three times as much.
I think this is just like hard drives. When I had my PIII500, I thought the 12 gig hard drive that came with it was all the space in the world, that I would never need more. Then I found napster, and those 12 gigs seemed so small.
I for one am happy with these price falls because I am one who can not afford to buy the newest and greatest.
The only thing I hate is the mail in rebate. If this 50% price fall comes in the way of the mail in rebate, they might as well not lower the price at all.
All those music corporations are guilty of price fixing. They kept charging $15 dollars a CD even though the cost of the media kept falling. They could not have all done this on their own, they must have illegally acted in concert to keep prices high. Someone should start a class action lawsuit. I knew people back in college with literally 100's of CD's that they paid every last dollar they made for the newest and greatest CD. They got ripped off.
Second, I believe sharing music is protected under free speech. It is no different than if I have a book and give it to a friend to read. What if I want to make a copy of a CD to give to my wife, so she can listen to it in her car, do I have to buy a second copy of the same CD? It would seem rediculous if the music industry expected us to buy the same product over and over again, at inflated prices.
I also want to add that I am all for supporting the artists. But the music companies treat the artists with the same heavy handed, one sided manner they treat the rest of us. They force new bands to sign contracts which give the bands next to nothing. Only the top singers can force the record companies to pay a fair wage, and that is only if their original contract is set to expire.
What should be done is the music industry should charge a fair fee for CD's and pay artists a fair wage. But until they start showing they want to be fair, I say why should we concede anything to them?
The court case specifically said Congress has the power to enact laws which would change the Betamax case outcome. The Court said they came to the conclusion based on laws congress had on the books. If those laws change, the outcome of the case would change.
What I think is more important is the RIAA hired Senator Hatchs son as one of their lobbyists. It should be a conflict of interest. Since they can't outright buy the Senator, they hire the kid who will have a wealth of oppertunity to influance his father.
They're trying to make it legally risky to introduce technologies that could be used for copyright infringement
IANAL, but won't this have a "chilling effect" on technology? Isn't it one thing to go after people who break the laws, rather than going after people who might offer ideas on how to break the law (or ideas with other applicability)? I guess this is one of the reasons I can not find anything which will record streaming media on the internet, and I have looked and looked and looked. One of my professors has his lectures streamed on-line, and I wanted to copy it to watch it later, but could not. I guess with this law, if someone made software to copy that streaming content, it would be illegal. Oh well, less power to the people I guess.
1) There is some national catastrophe. There is uncertainty if other imminent threats exsist. Comparing 3,000 people dying in an attack, and searching for drungs are so different in scope I am suprised that anyone would try and say they are the same thing. If someone asked me would I surrender my liberty to catch a drug dealer I would say no. If someone asked me if I would temporarily surrender some limited liberty to stop a dirty nuke from exploding I would say "hell yeah". Not that I would ever give my liberty away, but if it means a few weeks of less rights for years of greater security I am all for it.
2) That when the government does a search without a warrent, then there can be no arrest made based on what is seized by that search. So if the police search a house where they think there are drugs, but do not get a warrent, even if they find drugs that person can not be charged based on that evidence.
I think some people must be really pariniod that government is out to get everyone, when government is trying to protect USA citizens. How stupid would it be to say, because of our principles we will keep governments head in the sand, not alowing it to see upcomming threats. Instead we would rather let dirty nukes go off and planes fly into buildings than giving our government the tools to fight back and keep us free.
First, right after 9/11 there was a mad rush to figure out what happened and if it could happen again. So I can see the government in a mad hysteria trying to gather information to figure out if there is a threat. I do not blame the government for that.
Having said that, I think the court erred. If a company has a privacy policy, and the court says unless we read it and understand it we have "a low expectation of privacy"? That to me makes zero sense.
What should have happened was the government gathers the information in a time of vulnerability. Then after everything settles the courts order the information should not have been released. It gives us the best of both worlds. We can be protected in times of turbulence, and we can still have out fundamental rights protected in good times. That way the information is destroyed, no real damage done.
I think authentication is key. If we can get a few large companies and colleges to start only allowing emails from partners that have some authenticating feature, then others will catch on and follow the path. When it boils down to a few ISP's that are not responsible, and they are filtered out by most companies, they will have to change. But for this to work, it would require cooperation amoung many large buisnesses and schools to set a standard.
"A national do-not-e-mail registry, without a system in place to authenticate the origin of e-mail messages, would fail to reduce the burden of spam
What is so difficult about authenticating emails? Is there any way to encrypt something which says where an email originated from? How about routers that do not forward anything without the correct authentication? It would take big companies and schools signing on first, and then that would force free services like yahoo to have to be more responsible. I think those free email providers make it easier for people to spam by forging headers. There has to be a way to authenticate.
On Monday, the chipmaker announced Uni-DSL, or UDSL, which raises the bandwidth of digital subscriber line technology to the level necessary to deliver high-definition television (HDTV) signals and other advanced video services
This raises the question of how much bandwith is required for HDTV? I thought cable already was delivering this content. Does that mean a cable line can deliver more than the 200-300kbs I am getting now (on a good day).
The second question I would have is how fair will this be? When cable modems came out, they were available in the richest communities first. Then it spread to the middle class communities. I have a freind who lives south of chicago who wanted a cable modem 2 years ago (for his mom, who refuses to move out of her childhood home which is in a deprived neighborhood), and AT&T at the time was not offering broadband in his neighborhood. Yet I got mine a year before he asked for his. And what is worse is when the cable modem came out, a friend of mine who lives less than a mile away from me got his 18 months before I got mine, and he got a better deal. The cable company has raised the price twice since then. So for those who would say the first people pay for making the technology available to all, I would question that assumption.
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The music is a part of the parody. I think they are saying how absurd politics are. But that is my take on it.
Annoying behaviors are tricky because what annoys one person may sail by another. "You can say the same thing the same way to two people, and one person will say, 'Damn, that's annoying,' and the other person will not think anything of it,"
So what do you do? Keep the conversation dumbed down, filled with small talk? I always laughed at the comercials for television shows that said "we'll be talked about at the water cooler tomorrow, make sure you're not the one that misses it". Maybe that is what most people want? I don't buy it.
I try and not talk above anyone. But I don't want to talk down to people either. My solution is to explain things in the simplest way. It is like when I was in college and I knew this one guy who was smart. But I would never ask him for help with anything because he always made things 100 times more complex than it was just to show everyone how much smarter he was. Nobody liked him, not even other nerds. Lets call him Steve for arguments sake. If anyone asked Steve for help, even something as simple as 2+2, Steve would decide that calculus was needed to solve that problem. He then talked so fast, most of the time, to make sure you could not keep up. When Steve saw the confused look on the persons face, a grin would form on his face and he would slow down long enough to mockingly ask "can you follow this, it is really tough stuff you know, so hard". And you could never send him an email without getting it back, grammer corrected. What a prick.
I guess my advice is don't be Steve. Don't be that guy.
senator hatch is the one who sponsered the legislation to take away everyones rights to share music. hiring his son is a valid critisism. there is a conflict of interest. we don't let senators work for lobbying firms when they leave congress for the first few years, so why would we let their children work as lobbyists. seems unethical. who would be a greater influance in how a senator votes? a former senator selling them on some legislation, or their own children who's salary depends on what their father does?
my school had a $1 charge per credit hour, that went to a scholarship fund for minority students. nobody bothered to ever ask about it. so i decided to ask, and the school said it went to black and hispanic students to pay their tuition. i had to work a job while in college. i told them i did not want to pay that fee, and they looked at me like i was a racist. why don't they not automatically charge those fees but ask if you are interested in contributing instead.
while i understand that collective buying by the entire student body can drastically lower prices of certain services, should students have a right to say if they want to be included? or is there some special payment made to school officials, some dirty agreements? i can't help but wonder as i walk down the halls of a college that only offers pepsi products in vending machines, at the cost of $1 a can, $1.35 for a plastic bottle? i guess they need the revenue to pay the administrators their $200,000 a year salary.
i would not be suprised if this anonyous donor was napster itself, trying to set a precedent so other schools will subscribe. i can't help but think of the stripped down version of windows microsoft is peddeling in asia, or how they give out free copies of its operating system once a government decides to go open source.
But GWU officials are turning to the Napster service less as a means of wooing prospective students than as a way to tackle the technological and ethical crises posed by the downloading revolution
since when did this turn into a "crisis"? once again, the rhetoric is being rased by the same people who want to take away your right to back up music, share music, or make copies. the same people who illegally inflated the price of cd's, to which they were sued and lost. since they lost in the courthouse, they have been buying politicians in the congress. am i wrong? didn't they hire senator orin hatch's son?
Although the subscriptions will allow them to listen to as much music as they want for free through their computers, they will have to pay 99 cents for any song they copy onto a compact disc or portable music player
are you kidding me? can't people already buy music for 99 cents a song anywhere else? what are they paying for?
it looks like GWU got raped.
You are missing one of the main criteria for sports. You have to be able to stop someone else from scoring or getting what they want. In all games, there is a defense for the offense. What can you defensivly do to stop someone in math?
That is why I would classify something like ping pong as a sport. You have an opponent and you have to use your body to win. You move your legs to get you in place to make a shot, and you use your hands to add touch to the shot.
Math is not a sport. And you can't really have an oponent the way you can in real sports. How is the opponent going to stop you? In football cornerbacks try and stop wide recievers. In basketball people are gaurded. In baseball the pitcher trys to make you miss the pitch. What can your opponent do do in math? Nothing. Chess might be more arguable because the opponent can make moves to open up traps for you.
Gates is showing once and again that he is a smart guy who will take any advantage he can to get what he wants.
I remember a settlement Microsoft made with some school district. But instead of sending a check to the school, Microsoft offered them computers with the windows operating system. By negotiating a settlement in such a way, it is like getting free advertising. Most people do not want to learn 2 or 3 operating systems, they just want one they know how to use. How many of those high school students went on to use Windows based PC's in college and beyond? I don't know the anwser, but I do bet some would have used Apple if they had Apple computers in their lab.
I think the problem with Gates and Microsoft is they are unethical. It is one thing to make a product and sell it, another thing to use strong arm tactics to force people to use it. It has been said many times, but my local CompUSA and Circuit City only sell computers with Windows on them. And what is worse, my Sony Vaio laptop came with Windows, but not the CD to install it as I wish. Instead it reformats the hard drive into pre-determined partitions. And I can not pick what programs to install from that CD, it installs everything as it was when I first turned the laptop on. Getting some of that unwanted software off the PC was real work. Yuck.
But there are things Gates can do to be more friendly. Don't force windows to want a whole drive all to itself. If I have drive, and want to have a small partition for linux, don't force windows to reformat that partition to ntsc or fat. Let it be. It is a pain to have to do everything after windows is installed.
I think Bill Gates is obsessed with controlling the entire market share for computer operating systems, and now is moving into media control with his DRM technology and windows media player 9. What people really want is choice. What Windows does is take away choice.
Also from the article, and this scares me:
Earlier, Gates talked about the contributions Windows has made to the Asian economy. "Windows has opened up opportunities for computers and chips to be built in Asia. This will continue to be true for [such] software in providing high-paying jobs," he said.
Can we expect many of these high paying jobs to leave the USA? Is this Gates master plan. Make the USA dependant on Windows based software, then move as much of the production outside the USA?
Also:
Gates said Microsoft is having "good dialogues" with Asian governments, one area being their loss of tax revenue "when people don't pay for software".
Does this mean Gates will want some terrif imposed on all software, then work out some exemption for Microsoft? He has proven to be smart and creative in making thinks work out the way he wants it to, and he has proven to be unethical. I would not be suprised if he tried to stifle competition.
I thought he went to jail for doing this? I would have thought part of his release deal would have included not speaking about hacking and not associating with hackers. I remember from a political science class being told that most drug dealers who get released do so on the condition they will not associate with anyone known who is also a criminal. One guy who got caught at school using a computer for illegal purposes (and prosecuted) got a reduced sentance to two years probation and part of the deal was he could not use a computer.
What I hope the next step is that schools start using these on-line courses to award credit. It seems to me that everything is in place, and works without very much cost, or at least less cost than going to a classroom (if they can put the class notes on the web for free, how much more would it cost to add some test and record the scores?). It would be a great public service for people stuck in low paying jobs to be able to take some for_credit classes, without the pressure of having to go to a class with many younger people and feeling out of place. With tuition going up 10% a year, there needs to be a cheap alternative.
It is too bad that money is often what makes a person make a decision which puts them on a path in life where the person is not happy. I remember reading the magazines in college which ranked pay by degree. If only I would have stayed studying what trully excited and interested me- biology. I was facsinated with the possibility of genetic engineering as a method of solving disease and sickness. Now I do programming work when I find it, or other office work, and I hate it. Why? Because I decided to follow the money not realizing money does not give happiness and often what is a hot job/field today will not be in 5 years. Plus, who wants to excel at something they hate doing. You know, the kind of job where by lunch you want to go home.
There should be no reason to recruit outside the USA for PhD programs. We should be able to have a good pool of undergrads in the USA to fill almost every PhD seat.
I think the fix to the problem is not undergraduate education or high schools, but what is taught in the elementary schools. I knew two people in elementary/high school who went on to get PhD's. One was a person who was always entering science fairs and was excited and interested in discovery. The father of that guy never pushed the kid to "excel", but allowed the kid to feed his appetite of wonder. The other guy I knew as a kid did not really get excited about learning, but had a dad who pushed and pushed and pushed for his kid to be the best. I can't tell you how many times I remember his father telling him "do you want to push a broomstick the rest of your life?". Both did well in high school, both got into good colleges. The one who was liked studying and did not look at school as work enjoyed his graduate school days. The one who looked at school as another hurdle to jump did not like it, and dropped out early getting a masters (and now works as a programmer because it paid the best, even though he hates it).
I think what needs to be done is schools needs to get fun at an early age. It should not be a pressure filled johnny is better than mike type environment, because johnny did well on some test (only to have mike kick johnnys ass after school). I had only one good teacher in my first 8 years of schooling (before high school), and what made that teacher great was not that he taught better but that he made everyone excited about what they were doing and made everyone feel good about their interests. Those who were interested in fiction books were no less important as people than those who were looking at leaves under a magnifying glass. The teacher always asked with an excited face "how did you like that" and "what did you learn"; and anwsered "wow". It might sound dumb, but he was one hell of a fifth grade teacher. Much better than the guy who taught me algebra in high school who always took off 1/2 a point off a right anwser just to show me who was boss (for shit like "can't read your handwriting").
From the article: Anderson said Best Buy was tightening its rebate policies in the case of customers who abuse the privilege, but declined to say what else his company was doing to discourage its most costly customers.
There is a simple way to stop mail in rebate fraud. Give the rebate when the sale is made and record it on the reciept. But computer stores will never do this because of how many people forget to mail in the rebate in time. I for one hate mail in rebates, and think it is deceptive for stores to list the price of a product as the price after the rebate (with the rebate listed in small unreadable font). On second thought, I wonder if what he really means is how to screw people from sending in the rebate, like forcing them to print out their own rebates from some website or shortening the time window.
Now while Circuit City is no better with the rebates, at least there they really try and help you with what you buy. I purchased a laptop from them, saw 2 weeks later it was $100 less at another store (on-sale), and went to get the price match. The manager gave me the money plus 10% of the differance with no problems. She told me she was happy I was a customer and looked forward to servicing my needs again. That was good service.
There is a reason Sony sells so well. They make some of the best electronics in the world. I own a Sony TV that has been working for 8 years and never had a problem. Everything I purchased from them has lasted and worked. I pay more for it, but I think it is worth it. Much better than paying 25% less for something that breaks in a year. With Sony I have never purchased an extended warrenty because I feel secure knowing the product was manufactured to last.
As for them opening stores, if they are doing this for marketing (and not profit) I think it is a very smart move. Apple opened a store in a shopping center near me, and it is cool to go and play around with their toys. Plus, the people they hired are trained to be friendly and more playful compared to the "computer store" with the small Mac section in the back and the over stressed salesman. By having their own store, they can have a different buisness model than a store (marketing and advertising their product versus sales).
Second, was there a big bang? How did it all happen? These questions are relevent in how we think about our life and morality. Did life form on earth based on what was on earth, or was there some comet which had a fragment with the building blocks of life fall down to earth? What does it mean in terms of our religious beliefs? Perhaps science can bring all people together.
I think this is just like hard drives. When I had my PIII500, I thought the 12 gig hard drive that came with it was all the space in the world, that I would never need more. Then I found napster, and those 12 gigs seemed so small.
I for one am happy with these price falls because I am one who can not afford to buy the newest and greatest.
The only thing I hate is the mail in rebate. If this 50% price fall comes in the way of the mail in rebate, they might as well not lower the price at all.
Ogre yells NERDS!!!!!!!!!!
Second, I believe sharing music is protected under free speech. It is no different than if I have a book and give it to a friend to read. What if I want to make a copy of a CD to give to my wife, so she can listen to it in her car, do I have to buy a second copy of the same CD? It would seem rediculous if the music industry expected us to buy the same product over and over again, at inflated prices.
I also want to add that I am all for supporting the artists. But the music companies treat the artists with the same heavy handed, one sided manner they treat the rest of us. They force new bands to sign contracts which give the bands next to nothing. Only the top singers can force the record companies to pay a fair wage, and that is only if their original contract is set to expire.
What should be done is the music industry should charge a fair fee for CD's and pay artists a fair wage. But until they start showing they want to be fair, I say why should we concede anything to them?
So I ask everyone, what is a fair price for a CD?
What I think is more important is the RIAA hired Senator Hatchs son as one of their lobbyists. It should be a conflict of interest. Since they can't outright buy the Senator, they hire the kid who will have a wealth of oppertunity to influance his father.
IANAL, but won't this have a "chilling effect" on technology? Isn't it one thing to go after people who break the laws, rather than going after people who might offer ideas on how to break the law (or ideas with other applicability)? I guess this is one of the reasons I can not find anything which will record streaming media on the internet, and I have looked and looked and looked. One of my professors has his lectures streamed on-line, and I wanted to copy it to watch it later, but could not. I guess with this law, if someone made software to copy that streaming content, it would be illegal. Oh well, less power to the people I guess.
1) There is some national catastrophe. There is uncertainty if other imminent threats exsist. Comparing 3,000 people dying in an attack, and searching for drungs are so different in scope I am suprised that anyone would try and say they are the same thing. If someone asked me would I surrender my liberty to catch a drug dealer I would say no. If someone asked me if I would temporarily surrender some limited liberty to stop a dirty nuke from exploding I would say "hell yeah". Not that I would ever give my liberty away, but if it means a few weeks of less rights for years of greater security I am all for it.
2) That when the government does a search without a warrent, then there can be no arrest made based on what is seized by that search. So if the police search a house where they think there are drugs, but do not get a warrent, even if they find drugs that person can not be charged based on that evidence.
I think some people must be really pariniod that government is out to get everyone, when government is trying to protect USA citizens. How stupid would it be to say, because of our principles we will keep governments head in the sand, not alowing it to see upcomming threats. Instead we would rather let dirty nukes go off and planes fly into buildings than giving our government the tools to fight back and keep us free.
Having said that, I think the court erred. If a company has a privacy policy, and the court says unless we read it and understand it we have "a low expectation of privacy"? That to me makes zero sense.
What should have happened was the government gathers the information in a time of vulnerability. Then after everything settles the courts order the information should not have been released. It gives us the best of both worlds. We can be protected in times of turbulence, and we can still have out fundamental rights protected in good times. That way the information is destroyed, no real damage done.
I think authentication is key. If we can get a few large companies and colleges to start only allowing emails from partners that have some authenticating feature, then others will catch on and follow the path. When it boils down to a few ISP's that are not responsible, and they are filtered out by most companies, they will have to change. But for this to work, it would require cooperation amoung many large buisnesses and schools to set a standard.
What is so difficult about authenticating emails? Is there any way to encrypt something which says where an email originated from? How about routers that do not forward anything without the correct authentication? It would take big companies and schools signing on first, and then that would force free services like yahoo to have to be more responsible. I think those free email providers make it easier for people to spam by forging headers. There has to be a way to authenticate.
This raises the question of how much bandwith is required for HDTV? I thought cable already was delivering this content. Does that mean a cable line can deliver more than the 200-300kbs I am getting now (on a good day).
The second question I would have is how fair will this be? When cable modems came out, they were available in the richest communities first. Then it spread to the middle class communities. I have a freind who lives south of chicago who wanted a cable modem 2 years ago (for his mom, who refuses to move out of her childhood home which is in a deprived neighborhood), and AT&T at the time was not offering broadband in his neighborhood. Yet I got mine a year before he asked for his. And what is worse is when the cable modem came out, a friend of mine who lives less than a mile away from me got his 18 months before I got mine, and he got a better deal. The cable company has raised the price twice since then. So for those who would say the first people pay for making the technology available to all, I would question that assumption.