The big fighting robots and monsters from space? Metaphors. As cool looking as anime is, even the most-american friendly stuff is still pretty bewildering to many.
There's nothing wrong with the last couple episodes the same way there's nothing wrong with some other foreign film you've watched and didn't quite "get" but it did look pretty.
Sorry, but they advertised the service as faster than DSL and about the same price. Toss in quick installation and you've got yourself a customer base. Now you've got people *gasp* using the bandwidth they're paying for. It doesn't matter if you never turn your PC on or if you never shut Grokster down, you have the right to what you paid for. If their business model wasn't profitable to begin with, then they are being the disingenuous jerks that conned you into connecting into their cable network when you could be on a DSL connection instead.
This is another example of short-sighted business plans, a desperate grass at building a customer base, and then selling-short until most of the competition in the area gets finacially hurt.
Why people feel that the grokster 24/7 kid should be punished is beyond me. They sold him the service now they must deal with it. Conversely, if heavy users are going to be punished then give breaks to lightweight users. Of course that means the same pricing plan as DSL, which is who they're fighting and distancing themselves from. Sorry, but this is more corporate bullying than anything else.
Justify it however you want, you've chosen to take the site's content without paying the cost.
But pop-ups are okay to block because they're annoying? What we have here is a double-standard. There is no click-through agreement to view any advertising and no social contract to render their page the way they want to ON MY PC. Toss in annoying blinking crap and web bugs designed to compromise your privacy, then you'll find lots of people not standing up for this kind of treatment. There are products to keep people who block ads out, but very few (if any) websites use this because they know their fraction of a penny ads are worthless compared to building an online presence/brand.
Sure, it may seem like some mass hypocricy or something...but if the website isn't about "Use IIS for hosting two-page, temp web pages!" there really isn't much of an issue.
I agree with the sentiment that this isn't about web hosting, but then again its about business. Appearances are important and downtime just looks bad period for potential customers. It may not be logical, but if my storefront is falling apart you probably won't walk in to check out my products regardless of their merits.
Well maybe it is logical, if a company can't properly set up a marketing site how much faith can one have in its other decisions in outsourcing. At a certain point you just have to ask yourself, "Who is making these outsourcing decisions and why do they still have a job?"
On top of that, this is a marketing attempt against open source which has very little marketing muscle. Its just plain embarassing to see the world's wealthiest corporation falter in front of some geeks and some IBM marketing.
Sure this is a geek friendly story, but "internet time" which was called "hard work" at one point isn't limited to high tech. Have you ever tried to start your own company in any field? I have and yes, you do work for pennies and you do work twice or three times the hours your pals work all for a gamble that you can carve a niche out for yourself in your local economy.
3-D in the traditional sense has to do with showing a different picture to each eye. Everything else is just polygons.
What this monitor does do is lay a transparent layer on top of a regular LCD display. So its kind of having two monitors without moving your neck. Cool, but not 3D.
I got a lot of mileage out of my "Teens found new nation ask netizens to email for citizenship" hoax this year. Heh, only one guy emailed and asked what we were planning on doing on a sinking island.
These buildings received Certificates of Occupancy, had been tested in the prior attack, their systems and procedures were as good as any other in the world.
World? Try New York. There are different standards in every city and vary a bit from country to country.
I've seen better ideas at the half bakery and this list sounds way too seinfeld-ish to take seriously, but lets take a look.
MICROWAVE PLUS+
Sounds good on the surface, but microwave ovens suck in general so giving an exact time like "3 minutes and 12 seconds" will still leave some cold spots on the food and really hot spots somewhere else. Customer reps would get nothing but angry phone calls. At least VCR+ can deliver the goods. Except when the show runs late, gets preempted, etc but those are exceptions and for the microwave its all fuzzy logic.
PUNCH-IT-UP ALARM CLOCK
Nice, I wouldn't mind, but manufacturers might not like to add 8 or so new buttons especially if it'll raise costs, which it most likely will. Be smart when you shop, make sure you have both up and down for hour and minute and you'll be fine. What Clocks really need is a long-life battery to keep the time after the power's been cut.
BLIND DATA
This is the worst idea. How many american adults are bold enough to go up to a stranger and suddenly sex them up? Japanese teen culture is a bit different than American adult culture. What incentive would attractive people who get hit on left and right have to get one of these? Sounds like technology to help a social problem. Nice, but who wants to be with a socially inept person? I doubt many american parents would even let their teens own one. The stigma of video dating and the personals are going to apply to this as well.
Expect swingers and alt-culture types to pick this up. Though unless its incredibly cheap and considered a fad no one is going to pick it up.
TIVOCORDER
You would need to build an AMAZING microphone before this just delivered a lot of mumbling and static. You're also liable for all sorts of privacy no-no's. "Hey bob is recording our meeting on his pen!"
MP-TEETHBRUSH
Hehe. No comment.
INTERCOM-PUTER
This is stupid, I'm gonna blow money on some hardware when I can just 'net send' or IM. I can see it now, "Okay type in double-u double-u double-u yahoo dot com forward slash zee four..."
FLUMAPPER.COM
I don't think the author undertands how the flu works. Vaccinations are decided upon before any epidemic by their likelyhood of being the big bugs of the season by sampling sick people. When a patient has the flu that means he or she has any number of germs affecting them, not one that we can do a quick test for and shoot a vaccine over before school starts.
The map would be nice, but what would you do with it? Make sure to wear latex gloves and wash your hands every period? Eventually someone is going to want names of who is sick with what, and that's going to be a big mess. There's already a rash map for this strange rash epidemic going on now. Doesn't seem to be helping much.
SNAPFLAT SCREEN
Well, they'll stay expensive forever if no one buys more than one little screen every so often for every device. I can't imagine this handling the wear and tear and the kids are going to kill each other over who gets the screen when they get back from school.
THE I-PODULE
Cool idea, but its an old one. Currently, PDAs are the swiss army knives of the digital world. I'd rather see a small 50-100 meg device plugging into everything from ATMs to Coke machines than a 20 gig monster acting like an external SCSI drive that fits in your pocket. Its not worth the price of a mini-hard drive when they should be coming with the data hungry devices you've paid for.
5. Jokes that could start a lawsuit. Everyday, a script of the show goes to our legal adviser to be OK'd before the taping. Decisions are made on a case-by-case basis, but we all know to avoid certain areas.
For instance, the Church of Scientology is not the subject of jokes on The Daily Show. And The Daily Show does not put beloved children's characters into adult situations. You get the idea. Also, when working off a sound bite, no matter how mean the man-on-the-street sounds, we can't follow him up by saying something like, "This man then left to check on the body in his trunk."
They're brave enough to mock anyone in power and put total strangers on the spot, but the CoS is just too risky.
The search for "scientology" also lists a story from C|Net about Google delisting Operation Clambake, as well as a protest ad from a Kuro5hin reader (oc3)."
What a great idea. I just bought one for the short blurb I wrote last night on my weblog. Drop $10 to tell the world what you think of Scientology and its use of the DMCA.
You should just rephrase that as 'if you've got nothing to hide then why are you using encryption, envelopes, etc.'
There are 6 billion people in the planet, why would the "system" want to spy on you?
What system? Did you read the article? This is just a guy who owns a bar and suddenly he's got more information on the people in his neighborhood than the census bureu can legally ask for. That's the main practical problem - where is the accountability? Who protects my SSN. Identify theft and credit card fraud are very, very real and now individuals without any accountability have the information to pull these crimes off.
Less practical, but just as important is the principle of privacy. Everyday we're discovering that business and government are compiling data without any disclosure. Usually government rules force agencies to state what they are collecting and why, but in the realm of business such rules rarely apply. Look at all the people who dropped their jaws when they found out all their Tivo watching was logged after that article about the superbowl.
Accountability is VERY important. It lets us know who is doing what. It helps law enforcement find the bad guys and lets us know what activities compromise privacy. Prviacy is important, its a long held tradition to leave the individual alone unless she has done something wrong. Just because technology has made data collecting cheap doesn't mean its right.
Who knows what deal you have with your ISP about over the top charges, you're much better off just asking someone to host it as its much easier to hand over bandwidth than cash, at least for me. It seems a bit disingenuous to ask for money instead of bandwidth.
Well, I'm really interested in seeing where this goes. Will slashdotters pay up? Can the slashdot effect work in reverse?
I'm also interested if anyone has ever attempted legal action for slashdot-like effects. Its bound to come up.
Related Stories: Report warns of al-Qaeda's potential cybercapabilities don't you just love when we do half the terrorists jobs for them then wonder how they pull off elaborate attacks?
Yeah, they sure are helping the enemy.
The terrorists have connected to port 25, I repeat the terrorists have connected to port 25!!!!
So what its just a typo. The sad part is that the "face of linux" and a cabal of geeks just won't implement a spellcheck for their articles. Its just helps to make this forum look more juvenile than it really is. Imagine what newcomers think, "The grammer is terrible and the interface isn't so hot."
This article is just about the most anal (fruedian)thing I've read in a while. Its not about editing or CN itself, my problem with this is the moralists that more or less created the standards for the TV rating system. A system so weirdly complex that most people hardly pay attention to it.
Many moralists are simply religious figures, mostly catholics. Celibate men in black dresses helped created these restrictions and decided on what is appropriate and what isn't. The hilarity of turning guns into blasters was too much for me. What is the difference? The end result is if you're shot or zapped or what have you - then you have been injured.
The sexual hangups these ratings reveal are truly scary. I'm not suggesting that they air nude scenes, but sexuality, kissing, etc are natural and positive aspects of humanity. Many moralists take these acts as disgraceful things we need to hide and the the standards show it.
I don't want to blame religious people in general, as moralists and censors come from all sorts of backgrounds, but historically from early film on the religious establishment has had its thumb on free expression for a while. While a lot of the power has waned in the US, other countries are dealing with 1920's hangups turned into law by these moralists everyday.
I think CN has done a great job in delivering this programming in the conservative and sometimes hysterical US, where emasculation and protecting children define popular society. My real beef is how these ratings were created and quickly adopted by the networks without proper feedback from the people who actually live here, pay taxes, watch these shows, and buy advertised products.
Just by living in the US you get the crazy right-wing stuff without even trying. There's a religious show I'm fond of, it comes up on public access (a channel I do endorse) and its just a black fellow ranting and raving mentionaling all the prophets in a weird mix of Islam and Christianity. He's mic'ed like five feet away so even if he did stop shouting and started making sense you still couldn't make out what he was trying to say. This goes on for half an hour. Non-stop.
Just like cable television, though its a payment plan I hate. I get 70+ channels with AT&T and only really watch eight or nine cable channels at most, not including local channels. So right now my money goes towards networks that I consider crap and worse pays networks that engage in hate speech like some right-wing political shows or some religious programming.
I would much rather see an affiliate program that lets me pick 4 or 5 websites on my own for the $5 a month and dynamincally change them as my tastes change. Lets say I get sick of slashdot in the middle of the month, then they get a prorated check and I can subscribe to something else.
If anything this is a case of a company abusing its customers. If James Turner didn't get a lawyer and sue the rental store this crap would still be going on.
Now back to your regularly scheduled knee-jerking.
I checked the voltmeter and it looks like it charged up nicely overnight. I haven't worn kneepads or a helmet in ages, they make me feel kind of awkward. After waving goodbye to my wife I'm off to work which is about six miles from here. I can't wait, this thing is so cool. I feel ten years younger.
8:45am
Holy shit, where did all these kids come from? I thought the district bussed them to school. I can't ride on the street because everyone keeps yelling for me to go faster and I can barely maneuver the sidewalk with all these kids. Someone just called me "Spaceman." I thought kids loved technology. Sorry to the girl I knocked over, but in all fairness I did yell, "heads up!"
9:08am
Okay I'm officially late for work now, but I did find a bike lane. What's with this town? I thought all the granola-loving bikers forced the city to put bike lanes on every street. There's maybe a mile's worth from my place to downtown. The bikers were pretty nice. One man said to the rest, "Let the dude on the rascal get through." I don't know what a rascal is, but they did let me get through.
9:19am
Holy fuck is downtown packed and no one is letting me through. The way I tip cabs around here you'd think they would let ride on the side of the lane. The doorman at my building yelled at the crowd to let the "handicapped guy" through. I was going to correct him, but they were already letting me past. I did get to ride up the handicap ramp and park in the building. Now I need an AC outlet. This trip nearly drained the battery.
9:22am
I'm not the fittest guy in the world but they need to make these things a little lighter. You drag a 70lbs Segway up the stairs and tell me how your back feels.
12:04pm
I'm taking my Ginger, I mean my Segway, to lunch. I tried to get a co-worker to ride with me, but we fell and nearly broke our necks. I hope no one tells my wife that my hand got caught up in Jane's skirt as we were trying to get up. She didn't say anything and I think she really didn't noticed. A guy on one of those old time italian scooters yelled, "yuppie" at me and disappeared into traffic. Real mature.
12:12pm
I had to ride all the way to that bike store in the Village to pick up an extra-long Kryptonite lock. Looks like the "no bikes" sign applies to the Segway as well in restaurants. I barely have enough time to stop and get a sandwich before getting back to work. I have to call my lunchmates and tell them I didn't get into an accident. If I keep yelling, "Beep, beep coming through" every block I can actually make some time. This thing really needs a horn.
5:15pm
A cop called me over from the bike lane and told me unless I have a handicap permit I'm going to have to get motorcycle plates and a city sticker for this. He let me go this time, but he said if he sees me again mucking up traffic on my "razor scooter" I'm going to get arrested. I ran over a really big guy's toes pulling into the bike lane. He was really pissed. Four more people called me "Spaceman" on the way home. At least the doorman didn't call me handicapped again.
5:55pm
I'm home and I came this close to hosing off the dog crap on the wheels before I saw the electric shock warning sticker. The first thing my wife told me as I pulled into the garage is that I look and smell like shit.
6:15pm
I just called and the Shaper Image won't take returns. Great. I gotta get some good pictures of this thing for ebay. My 14-year old is gonna use it to get to her Lacrosse practices until I can sell it. I overheard her call it an "electric ass-mover." Her friend responded by saying, "Oh, that geekmobile thingy your dad dropped three grand on?"
What I don't get is why you and Katz are reading way too much into a movie. Its a work of fiction. Hollywood isn't pushing some message, some screenwriters who need to write something to sell aren't even pushing a message, they're making a story. If you watched it and thought that the supposed hero wasn't a hero at all, that's great. Assuming that you can't go against cliched characters and supposed messages from hollywood are The Truth is just plain stupid.
The _problem_ starts when someone starts using 100% of the bandwidth available to them, almost ALL the time. The problem is when there are about 50-100 people that does that.
The problem is making promises you can't keep. For instance, I'd much rather pay less for a 300/300 connection than the 128/1.5k I currently get. Not only would I be able to actually serve something I would happily endure a 300k connection if it meant it was my connection. My use 24/7.
Its advertising. ISPs can keep making claims about T1 speeds and the such, but in reality they're hedging their bets hoping that no one really uses that potential and lets their computers sit around all day. How about some truth in advertising and less prorated changes after they already have their gear in your house?
There's no such thing as a bandwidth hog. The ISP has the ability to cap any network node. They chose not to and are now paying the price.
Slashdot Mirror
The big fighting robots and monsters from space? Metaphors. As cool looking as anime is, even the most-american friendly stuff is still pretty bewildering to many.
There's nothing wrong with the last couple episodes the same way there's nothing wrong with some other foreign film you've watched and didn't quite "get" but it did look pretty.
Sorry, but they advertised the service as faster than DSL and about the same price. Toss in quick installation and you've got yourself a customer base. Now you've got people *gasp* using the bandwidth they're paying for. It doesn't matter if you never turn your PC on or if you never shut Grokster down, you have the right to what you paid for. If their business model wasn't profitable to begin with, then they are being the disingenuous jerks that conned you into connecting into their cable network when you could be on a DSL connection instead.
This is another example of short-sighted business plans, a desperate grass at building a customer base, and then selling-short until most of the competition in the area gets finacially hurt.
Why people feel that the grokster 24/7 kid should be punished is beyond me. They sold him the service now they must deal with it. Conversely, if heavy users are going to be punished then give breaks to lightweight users. Of course that means the same pricing plan as DSL, which is who they're fighting and distancing themselves from. Sorry, but this is more corporate bullying than anything else.
Justify it however you want, you've chosen to take the site's content without paying the cost.
But pop-ups are okay to block because they're annoying? What we have here is a double-standard. There is no click-through agreement to view any advertising and no social contract to render their page the way they want to ON MY PC. Toss in annoying blinking crap and web bugs designed to compromise your privacy, then you'll find lots of people not standing up for this kind of treatment. There are products to keep people who block ads out, but very few (if any) websites use this because they know their fraction of a penny ads are worthless compared to building an online presence/brand.
Obligatory ad blocking hosts file:
http://everythingisnt.com/hosts.html
Sure, it may seem like some mass hypocricy or something...but if the website isn't about "Use IIS for hosting two-page, temp web pages!" there really isn't much of an issue.
I agree with the sentiment that this isn't about web hosting, but then again its about business. Appearances are important and downtime just looks bad period for potential customers. It may not be logical, but if my storefront is falling apart you probably won't walk in to check out my products regardless of their merits.
Well maybe it is logical, if a company can't properly set up a marketing site how much faith can one have in its other decisions in outsourcing. At a certain point you just have to ask yourself, "Who is making these outsourcing decisions and why do they still have a job?"
On top of that, this is a marketing attempt against open source which has very little marketing muscle. Its just plain embarassing to see the world's wealthiest corporation falter in front of some geeks and some IBM marketing.
Sure this is a geek friendly story, but "internet time" which was called "hard work" at one point isn't limited to high tech. Have you ever tried to start your own company in any field? I have and yes, you do work for pennies and you do work twice or three times the hours your pals work all for a gamble that you can carve a niche out for yourself in your local economy.
3-D in the traditional sense has to do with showing a different picture to each eye. Everything else is just polygons.
What this monitor does do is lay a transparent layer on top of a regular LCD display. So its kind of having two monitors without moving your neck. Cool, but not 3D.
I got a lot of mileage out of my "Teens found new nation ask netizens to email for citizenship" hoax this year. Heh, only one guy emailed and asked what we were planning on doing on a sinking island.
Click
These buildings received Certificates of Occupancy, had been tested in the prior attack, their systems and procedures were as good as any other in the world.
World? Try New York. There are different standards in every city and vary a bit from country to country.
I've seen better ideas at the half bakery and this list sounds way too seinfeld-ish to take seriously, but lets take a look.
MICROWAVE PLUS+
Sounds good on the surface, but microwave ovens suck in general so giving an exact time like "3 minutes and 12 seconds" will still leave some cold spots on the food and really hot spots somewhere else. Customer reps would get nothing but angry phone calls. At least VCR+ can deliver the goods. Except when the show runs late, gets preempted, etc but those are exceptions and for the microwave its all fuzzy logic.
PUNCH-IT-UP ALARM CLOCK
Nice, I wouldn't mind, but manufacturers might not like to add 8 or so new buttons especially if it'll raise costs, which it most likely will. Be smart when you shop, make sure you have both up and down for hour and minute and you'll be fine. What Clocks really need is a long-life battery to keep the time after the power's been cut.
BLIND DATA
This is the worst idea. How many american adults are bold enough to go up to a stranger and suddenly sex them up? Japanese teen culture is a bit different than American adult culture. What incentive would attractive people who get hit on left and right have to get one of these? Sounds like technology to help a social problem. Nice, but who wants to be with a socially inept person? I doubt many american parents would even let their teens own one. The stigma of video dating and the personals are going to apply to this as well.
Expect swingers and alt-culture types to pick this up. Though unless its incredibly cheap and considered a fad no one is going to pick it up.
TIVOCORDER
You would need to build an AMAZING microphone before this just delivered a lot of mumbling and static. You're also liable for all sorts of privacy no-no's. "Hey bob is recording our meeting on his pen!"
MP-TEETHBRUSH
Hehe. No comment.
INTERCOM-PUTER
This is stupid, I'm gonna blow money on some hardware when I can just 'net send' or IM. I can see it now, "Okay type in double-u double-u double-u yahoo dot com forward slash zee four..."
FLUMAPPER.COM
I don't think the author undertands how the flu works. Vaccinations are decided upon before any epidemic by their likelyhood of being the big bugs of the season by sampling sick people. When a patient has the flu that means he or she has any number of germs affecting them, not one that we can do a quick test for and shoot a vaccine over before school starts.
The map would be nice, but what would you do with it? Make sure to wear latex gloves and wash your hands every period? Eventually someone is going to want names of who is sick with what, and that's going to be a big mess. There's already a rash map for this strange rash epidemic going on now. Doesn't seem to be helping much.
SNAPFLAT SCREEN
Well, they'll stay expensive forever if no one buys more than one little screen every so often for every device. I can't imagine this handling the wear and tear and the kids are going to kill each other over who gets the screen when they get back from school.
THE I-PODULE
Cool idea, but its an old one. Currently, PDAs are the swiss army knives of the digital world. I'd rather see a small 50-100 meg device plugging into everything from ATMs to Coke machines than a 20 gig monster acting like an external SCSI drive that fits in your pocket. Its not worth the price of a mini-hard drive when they should be coming with the data hungry devices you've paid for.
It's the only game in this feature that we can refer to in the present tense, because it is the only game still being actively worked on.
That's not true, there are MUDs out there that are still being worked on, features being added, etc.
They're brave enough to mock anyone in power and put total strangers on the spot, but the CoS is just too risky.
The search for "scientology" also lists a story from C|Net about Google delisting Operation Clambake, as well as a protest ad from a Kuro5hin reader (oc3)."
What a great idea. I just bought one for the short blurb I wrote last night on my weblog. Drop $10 to tell the world what you think of Scientology and its use of the DMCA.
I you are not a criminal, chill.
You should just rephrase that as 'if you've got nothing to hide then why are you using encryption, envelopes, etc.'
There are 6 billion people in the planet, why would the "system" want to spy on you?
What system? Did you read the article? This is just a guy who owns a bar and suddenly he's got more information on the people in his neighborhood than the census bureu can legally ask for. That's the main practical problem - where is the accountability? Who protects my SSN. Identify theft and credit card fraud are very, very real and now individuals without any accountability have the information to pull these crimes off.
Less practical, but just as important is the principle of privacy. Everyday we're discovering that business and government are compiling data without any disclosure. Usually government rules force agencies to state what they are collecting and why, but in the realm of business such rules rarely apply. Look at all the people who dropped their jaws when they found out all their Tivo watching was logged after that article about the superbowl.
Accountability is VERY important. It lets us know who is doing what. It helps law enforcement find the bad guys and lets us know what activities compromise privacy. Prviacy is important, its a long held tradition to leave the individual alone unless she has done something wrong. Just because technology has made data collecting cheap doesn't mean its right.
Who knows what deal you have with your ISP about over the top charges, you're much better off just asking someone to host it as its much easier to hand over bandwidth than cash, at least for me. It seems a bit disingenuous to ask for money instead of bandwidth.
Well, I'm really interested in seeing where this goes. Will slashdotters pay up? Can the slashdot effect work in reverse?
I'm also interested if anyone has ever attempted legal action for slashdot-like effects. Its bound to come up.
Related Stories: Report warns of al-Qaeda's potential cybercapabilities
don't you just love when we do half the terrorists jobs for them then wonder how they pull off elaborate attacks?
Yeah, they sure are helping the enemy.
The terrorists have connected to port 25, I repeat the terrorists have connected to port 25!!!!
So what its just a typo. The sad part is that the "face of linux" and a cabal of geeks just won't implement a spellcheck for their articles. Its just helps to make this forum look more juvenile than it really is. Imagine what newcomers think, "The grammer is terrible and the interface isn't so hot."
This article is just about the most anal (fruedian)thing I've read in a while. Its not about editing or CN itself, my problem with this is the moralists that more or less created the standards for the TV rating system. A system so weirdly complex that most people hardly pay attention to it.
Many moralists are simply religious figures, mostly catholics. Celibate men in black dresses helped created these restrictions and decided on what is appropriate and what isn't. The hilarity of turning guns into blasters was too much for me. What is the difference? The end result is if you're shot or zapped or what have you - then you have been injured.
The sexual hangups these ratings reveal are truly scary. I'm not suggesting that they air nude scenes, but sexuality, kissing, etc are natural and positive aspects of humanity. Many moralists take these acts as disgraceful things we need to hide and the the standards show it.
I don't want to blame religious people in general, as moralists and censors come from all sorts of backgrounds, but historically from early film on the religious establishment has had its thumb on free expression for a while. While a lot of the power has waned in the US, other countries are dealing with 1920's hangups turned into law by these moralists everyday.
I think CN has done a great job in delivering this programming in the conservative and sometimes hysterical US, where emasculation and protecting children define popular society. My real beef is how these ratings were created and quickly adopted by the networks without proper feedback from the people who actually live here, pay taxes, watch these shows, and buy advertised products.
Think about that scenario next time you see a case built to show off about $500 worth of consumer-grade computer components.
The chances of living next to a senator that uses a computer and would notice rf interference has to be non-existant.
Just by living in the US you get the crazy right-wing stuff without even trying. There's a religious show I'm fond of, it comes up on public access (a channel I do endorse) and its just a black fellow ranting and raving mentionaling all the prophets in a weird mix of Islam and Christianity. He's mic'ed like five feet away so even if he did stop shouting and started making sense you still couldn't make out what he was trying to say. This goes on for half an hour. Non-stop.
Just like cable television, though its a payment plan I hate. I get 70+ channels with AT&T and only really watch eight or nine cable channels at most, not including local channels. So right now my money goes towards networks that I consider crap and worse pays networks that engage in hate speech like some right-wing political shows or some religious programming.
I would much rather see an affiliate program that lets me pick 4 or 5 websites on my own for the $5 a month and dynamincally change them as my tastes change. Lets say I get sick of slashdot in the middle of the month, then they get a prorated check and I can subscribe to something else.
If anything this is a case of a company abusing its customers. If James Turner didn't get a lawyer and sue the rental store this crap would still be going on.
Now back to your regularly scheduled knee-jerking.
http://www.everythingisnt.com/features/segway.html
8:30am
I checked the voltmeter and it looks like it charged up nicely overnight. I haven't worn kneepads or a helmet in ages, they make me feel kind of awkward. After waving goodbye to my wife I'm off to work which is about six miles from here. I can't wait, this thing is so cool. I feel ten years younger.
8:45am
Holy shit, where did all these kids come from? I thought the district bussed them to school. I can't ride on the street because everyone keeps yelling for me to go faster and I can barely maneuver the sidewalk with all these kids. Someone just called me "Spaceman." I thought kids loved technology. Sorry to the girl I knocked over, but in all fairness I did yell, "heads up!"
9:08am
Okay I'm officially late for work now, but I did find a bike lane. What's with this town? I thought all the granola-loving bikers forced the city to put bike lanes on every street. There's maybe a mile's worth from my place to downtown. The bikers were pretty nice. One man said to the rest, "Let the dude on the rascal get through." I don't know what a rascal is, but they did let me get through.
9:19am
Holy fuck is downtown packed and no one is letting me through. The way I tip cabs around here you'd think they would let ride on the side of the lane. The doorman at my building yelled at the crowd to let the "handicapped guy" through. I was going to correct him, but they were already letting me past. I did get to ride up the handicap ramp and park in the building. Now I need an AC outlet. This trip nearly drained the battery.
9:22am
I'm not the fittest guy in the world but they need to make these things a little lighter. You drag a 70lbs Segway up the stairs and tell me how your back feels.
12:04pm
I'm taking my Ginger, I mean my Segway, to lunch. I tried to get a co-worker to ride with me, but we fell and nearly broke our necks. I hope no one tells my wife that my hand got caught up in Jane's skirt as we were trying to get up. She didn't say anything and I think she really didn't noticed. A guy on one of those old time italian scooters yelled, "yuppie" at me and disappeared into traffic. Real mature.
12:12pm
I had to ride all the way to that bike store in the Village to pick up an extra-long Kryptonite lock. Looks like the "no bikes" sign applies to the Segway as well in restaurants. I barely have enough time to stop and get a sandwich before getting back to work. I have to call my lunchmates and tell them I didn't get into an accident. If I keep yelling, "Beep, beep coming through" every block I can actually make some time. This thing really needs a horn.
5:15pm
A cop called me over from the bike lane and told me unless I have a handicap permit I'm going to have to get motorcycle plates and a city sticker for this. He let me go this time, but he said if he sees me again mucking up traffic on my "razor scooter" I'm going to get arrested. I ran over a really big guy's toes pulling into the bike lane. He was really pissed. Four more people called me "Spaceman" on the way home. At least the doorman didn't call me handicapped again.
5:55pm
I'm home and I came this close to hosing off the dog crap on the wheels before I saw the electric shock warning sticker. The first thing my wife told me as I pulled into the garage is that I look and smell like shit.
6:15pm
I just called and the Shaper Image won't take returns. Great. I gotta get some good pictures of this thing for ebay. My 14-year old is gonna use it to get to her Lacrosse practices until I can sell it. I overheard her call it an "electric ass-mover." Her friend responded by saying, "Oh, that geekmobile thingy your dad dropped three grand on?"
This makes him a hero?
...
I don't get it.
What I don't get is why you and Katz are reading way too much into a movie. Its a work of fiction. Hollywood isn't pushing some message, some screenwriters who need to write something to sell aren't even pushing a message, they're making a story. If you watched it and thought that the supposed hero wasn't a hero at all, that's great. Assuming that you can't go against cliched characters and supposed messages from hollywood are The Truth is just plain stupid.
After Oklahoma City there were still action movies and way before O.C. we all said they stunk. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
The _problem_ starts when someone starts using 100% of the bandwidth available to them, almost ALL the time. The problem is when there are about 50-100 people that does that.
The problem is making promises you can't keep. For instance, I'd much rather pay less for a 300/300 connection than the 128/1.5k I currently get. Not only would I be able to actually serve something I would happily endure a 300k connection if it meant it was my connection. My use 24/7.
Its advertising. ISPs can keep making claims about T1 speeds and the such, but in reality they're hedging their bets hoping that no one really uses that potential and lets their computers sit around all day. How about some truth in advertising and less prorated changes after they already have their gear in your house?
There's no such thing as a bandwidth hog. The ISP has the ability to cap any network node. They chose not to and are now paying the price.