That's a lousy example. Didn't he fight to promote DC because he held the patent on DC current and NOT on AC current? It had nothing to do with being a bad idea, it had to do with Edison wanting to cash in on his invention.
True, but you gotta wonder about the sanity of a guy who toured the country killing dogs to show how "unsafe" AC current is. To say nothing about inventing the Electric Chair for the same purpose.
Mind bogging incompetance, or mean spirited abuse of power. I'm gonna go with mean spiritted: I don't think someone that incompetant would ever earn the right to make that decision, especially since it happened again to a similar show on the same network not long afterwards.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Technically what is supposed to happen is when you are visiting in another state, you are not supposed to pay any sales tax in that state, but also you are supposed to make records of all of your purchases, and report that with your state income taxes at the end of the year.
This is also how it is supposed to work when you buy stuff mailorder without being assessed a sales tax.
No one follows this. Everyone just thinks that every state has sales tax so just simplify it and pay it in whatever state you happen to be in. And no one bothers to report stuff they get away with because of mail order.
I am from Oregon, and can confirm that in Washington I can show my driver's license, and they will not charge me sales tax. But if I try that in any other state they will look at me like I am crazy.
Like the idea of not taxing something is insane.
People just have had it beaten into their heads that you must be taxed at every opportunity, and to just accept it.
(And don't pretend to me that stupid liberal "neo-con" Republican politicians do anything more than pay lip service to lower taxes.)
I might be an Anarchist, but I don't believe that we should just get rid of the government and replace it with nothing. I may be a libertarian, but I do recognize that we need a government to perform certain services, and that we therefore have to pay some taxes. I think that the government is too big and there are too many taxes, but if we must pay taxes I would prefer income taxes and property taxes. With those taxes at least you can write them off your federal income taxes. You don't get to write off sales taxes, so I prefer the way things are done in Oregon and would not change it.
I suppose to make this somewhat on topic I can say that as long as we don't have a sales tax in Oregon, no politician is going to be stupid enough to propose an internet tax.
No wait, what am I saying?
Never underestimate the power of stupidity.
But even if the legislature was able to pass it, it would be refered to the voters and voted down. And in this case I think that's a good thing.
according to what the Amusement & Music Operators Association (AMOA) said in 1997, the most popular jukebox selection of all time is Patsy Cline's recording of "Crazy."
And what exactly does that say about our culture?:)
slightly, but not quite seriously, is this just counting 7" records, or does it also include "jukeboxes" that play CDs?
Why don't we just nip this in the butt now and label them what they actually are then, viruses.
I'm sure there are others out there reading this thinking (and I'm thinking it myself):
Virus != Worm != Trojan != Spyware
hmmmm...
Well, Spyware probably does equal Trojan but I digress.
The problem is that the masses of ignorant computer users get confused when using specific and correct terminology. I remeber there was a time when spam refered exclusively to "usenet spam" and that which had a Breibart Index >= 20. Well, now we all accept the term to include "email spam." Also, when we started having real (not goodtimes) email viruses (thank you microsoft) I would usually refer to them as "trojan email worms." Seems silly now.
I guess we have to give in and dumb down the language like the mainstream media does and include spyware under the umbrella of "virus" along with worms, trojans and other malware.
To say nothing about the satisfaction of these assholes going to prison for what I think most of us agree are criminal acts.
Timothy Busfield (Dick Gordon): National Security Agency. Robert Redford (Martin Bishop): Oh, you're the guys I hear breathing on the other end of my phone. Timothy Busfield (Gordon): No, that's the F.B.I. We're not chartered for domestic surveillance. Robert Redford (Martin): Oh, I see. You just overthrow governments and set up friendly dictators. Timothy Busfield (Gordon): No, that's the C.I.A. We protect our government's communications, we try and break the other fellow's codes. We're the good guys, Marty. Robert Redford (Martin): Gee, I can't tell you what a relief that is, Dick.
At least I remember talking to someone about it. It is a plant that is a lot like grass, except it stops growing at 2" naturally.
I have severe grass pollen allergies, and have to hire someone to cut my grass. I pretty much consider grass to be a weed, and really wish I could get rid of it entirely, but as I understand it that is very hard to do without digging out and throwing away the top layer of soil.
The naturally occuring plant that I was told about might be a nice alternative. Part of the problem is expense, but I was also told that it will eventually take over a lawn if you plant it in one part like an invasive species. This is nice if you want it, but then I also have neighbors whose lot does not have a barrier with mine, and I don't know if they wouldn't like it. While this new plant might have the advantage that I not have allergies to it, it is also possible that my allergies would be worse with this plant than with grass.
So the problems with this new, naturally occuring plant are that I might not be able to get rid of it once I plant it, and that I might have even more allergies with it than before.
Anyone know what plant I'm talking about btw?
Regardless, I would have the same worries with a GE grass, except I think there would be a much greater possibility of worse allergy problems. (To say nothing of gene drift and contaminating the general environment with something that we cannot possibly see the full consequences of for quite a while. We already have enough problems with natural but importanted plants like blackberries and scotch broom where I live.)
Not quite as serious, but all computer geeks should appreciate the Polish mathematician Leonhard Euler, and therefore should not put up with stupid Polish jokes.
(I'm not going to bother spell checking this comment.) (It will probably be funnier if I misspelled cannon.) (or have I been listening to to much Bach lately?)
Interesting link btw. I get pretty sick of smokers, but yea, what you do at home is your own business.
Have users SSH into the ISP email server, and use a simple client like Pine to send and receive their email.
This is my prefered way to read email. I still sort of do it but I know have many secondary email accounts where I download the emails with fetchmail.
At a former ISP, I was still able to ssh to a shell account to read my email. At some point the ISP got bought out and the tech support changed. Some time after this I was having problems logging into the shell account. I call up and say "I'm trying to SSH into my shell account to read my email and it just hangs after I enter my password."
"Why do you need to SSH to read your email?" "That's just the way I prefer to do it." "But You don't need SSH to read email...." "Never mind the email, the point is I can't log into my shell account." "We provide shell accounts?"
Anyway, if they did things MY way, you wouldn't be allowed on the internet until you learned to use vi and could demonstrate it. (Normally I lean towards libertarian values, but hey, I think this is a reasonable requirement.)
Reminds me of a flyer I once saw that explained that the worlds major, non-christian religions were all evil.
One of the reasons was they all had 6 letters in their name. Of course they had to misspell most of them to make that one work. I really wish I had kept a copy of that flyer. It would have been good material for art/music projects.
I clicked the link, and while it was loading, was doing something else for a few minutes. I opened it again to read it and had forgotten that it was an Onion article for a few momements before realizing it wasn't serious.
If they say they don't sell my information then I guess I could sue them as well, since the only way someone could have gotten that address is from them.
Not quite, it is possible they could get it from brute force.
Also, I'm not sure if it happens, but could a spammer crack into a mail server and steel the logs or something? I've had friends that started getting spams with keywords that were disturbingly close to the subject matter they would normally converse about. (It was as if someone had been reading their email.)
Generally they are those who would have been eaten by wolves long ago if it weren't for civilization trumping evolution.
With any luck, the people buying from spammers will win enough Darwin Awards that they die out, and then the spammers will die out when they have no one left to prey on.
Slashdot Mirror
That's a lousy example. Didn't he fight to promote DC because he held the patent on DC current and NOT on AC current? It had nothing to do with being a bad idea, it had to do with Edison wanting to cash in on his invention.
True, but you gotta wonder about the sanity of a guy who toured the country killing dogs to show how "unsafe" AC current is. To say nothing about inventing the Electric Chair for the same purpose.
http://www.snopes.com/science/edison.htm
(I looked it up because I never did confirm that that was true, but now I've got it confirmed by snopes.)
I can't believe that no one has made any referances to government spending on White Persian Cats.
At least I found none in the short scan I did of this article's comments.
Mind bogging incompetance, or mean spirited abuse of power. I'm gonna go with mean spiritted: I don't think someone that incompetant would ever earn the right to make that decision, especially since it happened again to a similar show on the same network not long afterwards.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_J._Hanlon
Never underestimate the power of stupidity.
It is the most powerful force in the universe.
(Should I bother to spell check this?)
Technically what is supposed to happen is when you are visiting in another state, you are not supposed to pay any sales tax in that state, but also you are supposed to make records of all of your purchases, and report that with your state income taxes at the end of the year.
This is also how it is supposed to work when you buy stuff mailorder without being assessed a sales tax.
No one follows this. Everyone just thinks that every state has sales tax so just simplify it and pay it in whatever state you happen to be in. And no one bothers to report stuff they get away with because of mail order.
I am from Oregon, and can confirm that in Washington I can show my driver's license, and they will not charge me sales tax. But if I try that in any other state they will look at me like I am crazy.
Like the idea of not taxing something is insane.
People just have had it beaten into their heads that you must be taxed at every opportunity, and to just accept it.
(And don't pretend to me that stupid liberal "neo-con" Republican politicians do anything more than pay lip service to lower taxes.)
I might be an Anarchist, but I don't believe that we should just get rid of the government and replace it with nothing. I may be a libertarian, but I do recognize that we need a government to perform certain services, and that we therefore have to pay some taxes. I think that the government is too big and there are too many taxes, but if we must pay taxes I would prefer income taxes and property taxes. With those taxes at least you can write them off your federal income taxes. You don't get to write off sales taxes, so I prefer the way things are done in Oregon and would not change it.
I suppose to make this somewhat on topic I can say that as long as we don't have a sales tax in Oregon, no politician is going to be stupid enough to propose an internet tax.
No wait, what am I saying?
Never underestimate the power of stupidity.
But even if the legislature was able to pass it, it would be refered to the voters and voted down. And in this case I think that's a good thing.
And we ain't got no money left, aren't we just communists?
maybe, either that or the ultimate result of fascism.
What's the difference between communism and one big corporation that owns everything?
A rose by any other name....
they'll try to tax underpants next. I'm sure Gnome Lobbyists wll object.
How do you think the KDE lobbyists will respond?
No, they are still evil.
Just because they promote something that is "good" now and then doesn't mean that politicians are not evil.
A broken clock will display the correct time twice a day.
according to what the Amusement & Music Operators Association (AMOA) said in 1997, the most popular jukebox selection of all time is Patsy Cline's recording of "Crazy."
:)
And what exactly does that say about our culture?
slightly, but not quite seriously, is this just counting 7" records, or does it also include "jukeboxes" that play CDs?
Well, if it is 4 minutes, 33 seconds of silence, then I'm afraid that silence is copyrighted by John Cage.
Won't somebody PLEASE think of John Cage!!!!
Why don't we just nip this in the butt now and label them what they actually are then, viruses.
I'm sure there are others out there reading this thinking (and I'm thinking it myself):
Virus != Worm != Trojan != Spyware
hmmmm...
Well, Spyware probably does equal Trojan but I digress.
The problem is that the masses of ignorant computer users get confused when using specific and correct terminology. I remeber there was a time when spam refered exclusively to "usenet spam" and that which had a Breibart Index >= 20. Well, now we all accept the term to include "email spam." Also, when we started having real (not goodtimes) email viruses (thank you microsoft) I would usually refer to them as "trojan email worms." Seems silly now.
I guess we have to give in and dumb down the language like the mainstream media does and include spyware under the umbrella of "virus" along with worms, trojans and other malware.
To say nothing about the satisfaction of these assholes going to prison for what I think most of us agree are criminal acts.
Timothy Busfield (Dick Gordon): National Security Agency.
Robert Redford (Martin Bishop): Oh, you're the guys I hear breathing on the other end of my phone.
Timothy Busfield (Gordon): No, that's the F.B.I. We're not chartered for domestic surveillance.
Robert Redford (Martin): Oh, I see. You just overthrow governments and set up friendly dictators.
Timothy Busfield (Gordon): No, that's the C.I.A. We protect our government's communications, we try and break the other fellow's codes. We're the good guys, Marty.
Robert Redford (Martin): Gee, I can't tell you what a relief that is, Dick.
At least I remember talking to someone about it.
It is a plant that is a lot like grass, except it stops growing at 2" naturally.
I have severe grass pollen allergies, and have to hire someone to cut my grass. I pretty much consider grass to be a weed, and really wish I could get rid of it entirely, but as I understand it that is very hard to do without digging out and throwing away the top layer of soil.
The naturally occuring plant that I was told about might be a nice alternative. Part of the problem is expense, but I was also told that it will eventually take over a lawn if you plant it in one part like an invasive species. This is nice if you want it, but then I also have neighbors whose lot does not have a barrier with mine, and I don't know if they wouldn't like it. While this new plant might have the advantage that I not have allergies to it, it is also possible that my allergies would be worse with this plant than with grass.
So the problems with this new, naturally occuring plant are that I might not be able to get rid of it once I plant it, and that I might have even more allergies with it than before.
Anyone know what plant I'm talking about btw?
Regardless, I would have the same worries with a GE grass, except I think there would be a much greater possibility of worse allergy problems. (To say nothing of gene drift and contaminating the general environment with something that we cannot possibly see the full consequences of for quite a while. We already have enough problems with natural but importanted plants like blackberries and scotch broom where I live.)
I think they should combine all of those into one spectacular game.
Not quite as serious, but all computer geeks should appreciate the Polish mathematician Leonhard Euler, and therefore should not put up with stupid Polish jokes.
In the future maybe our personal android will hide our keys.
They deserve to be fired....
out of a cannon....
into the sun.
(I'm not going to bother spell checking this comment.)
(It will probably be funnier if I misspelled cannon.)
(or have I been listening to to much Bach lately?)
Interesting link btw.
I get pretty sick of smokers, but yea, what you do at home is your own business.
There's no problem as long as they are willing to get the 666 tattooed on their forehead.
Have users SSH into the ISP email server, and use a simple client like Pine to send and receive their email.
This is my prefered way to read email. I still sort of do it but I know have many secondary email accounts where I download the emails with fetchmail.
At a former ISP, I was still able to ssh to a shell account to read my email. At some point the ISP got bought out and the tech support changed. Some time after this I was having problems logging into the shell account. I call up and say "I'm trying to SSH into my shell account to read my email and it just hangs after I enter my password."
"Why do you need to SSH to read your email?"
"That's just the way I prefer to do it."
"But You don't need SSH to read email...."
"Never mind the email, the point is I can't log into my shell account."
"We provide shell accounts?"
Anyway, if they did things MY way, you wouldn't be allowed on the internet until you learned to use vi and could demonstrate it. (Normally I lean towards libertarian values, but hey, I think this is a reasonable requirement.)
Reminds me of a flyer I once saw that explained that the worlds major, non-christian religions were all evil.
One of the reasons was they all had 6 letters in their name. Of course they had to misspell most of them to make that one work. I really wish I had kept a copy of that flyer. It would have been good material for art/music projects.
We have a radio program in Portland on the weekends hosted by some "long time computer experts"
Is that the one on 910 Sunday Mornings?
If so I haven't paid too much attention to it.
If not I might have enough morbid curiosity to check it out.
(I'm not sure if I'll laugh or cry or both.)
No, it's only the end of the Nucular Innernet.
No, it's only the end of the Nucular Innernet as we know it.
Film at 11.
(And not to completely run this joke into the ground.....)
And I feel fine.
I clicked the link, and while it was loading, was doing something else for a few minutes. I opened it again to read it and had forgotten that it was an Onion article for a few momements before realizing it wasn't serious.
Would I prefer that Spam be stopped dead in it's tracks?
How long do you think until companies start hiring hitmen to take out the spammers permanently?
If they say they don't sell my information then I guess I could sue them as well, since the only way someone could have gotten that address is from them.
Not quite, it is possible they could get it from brute force.
Also, I'm not sure if it happens, but could a spammer crack into a mail server and steel the logs or something? I've had friends that started getting spams with keywords that were disturbingly close to the subject matter they would normally converse about. (It was as if someone had been reading their email.)
Generally they are those who would have been eaten by wolves long ago if it weren't for civilization trumping evolution.
With any luck, the people buying from spammers will win enough Darwin Awards that they die out, and then the spammers will die out when they have no one left to prey on.
We can only hope.