The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation only donates a small fraction of its holdings
I honestly don't know enough about it to debate you on the other points you bought up but this one seems questionable. The whole point of an endowment is to finance your activities off the earnings of that money so it's sustainable over the long run. You don't spend the money itself.
then why isn't the universe overrun with one or more sentient lifeforms?
Maybe it is and they just haven't found us. Maybe the light speed limitation really can't be overcome. Maybe they know we are here and have (wisely?) chosen not to make contact. Maybe we are the "first ones" and sentient life hasn't evolved anywhere else yet. Maybe we aren't fat enough to harvest just yet;)
To each their own, but I've never seen TV as being worth what it seems to cost in modern times. I can recall getting basic cable (40-60 channels) for as little as $20 just ten years ago -- after Time Warner bought out our local cable company it went up to $40. Now it starts at $55 for basic cable and $65 for digital cable.
I ditched it three years ago and went down to 'lifeline' service (just the network stations) and haven't looked back. Whatever cable shows I can't get I can wait for the DVD releases and get through Netflix -- and now there seems to be digital avenues opening up (The Daily Show & South Park webpages come to mind).
In the FIOS $99 triple play only $10 of it goes to the land line.
Before taxes and fees I'm assuming? Half the reason I don't have a landline anymore is the taxes and fees (state and local, federal, FCC line charge, USF charges) tripled the bill. I can get 'message rate' service (pay 9 cents for each local call) from Verizon for less than $10/mo. For that price it's worthwhile keeping POTS around (cell phone battery dies, power goes out, etc, etc) -- but after all of the fees are applied it winds up costing $30-$35/mo, which is too much money to justify spending on something I rarely use.
FIOS is obviously targeting the high end neighborhoods first. They are picking off all of the most profitable customers. People in those neighbors tend to be technically sophisticated so 80%+ of them switch to FIOS.
People in those neighborhoods also tend to be the types that will pay for triple play packages they probably don't need. Landline service, cable TV service with all the fixings and the fastest internet service they can afford. They are hugely profitable for the tel/cable-cos.
By contrast, I've never gotten priority treatment or pricing from either Time Warner or Verizon. Some people at Time Warner barely bothered to hide their contempt for me because I wouldn't let them talk me into buying cable service -- I've got the network stations and that's it ($5.99/mo), which I wouldn't even have if I could get decent reception with antenna. Ditto for Verizon as I only have dry-loop DSL service with them, though they've never wasted as much of my time trying to sell me stuff I don't want as Time Warner has (some TW reps refuse to take no for an answer).
I don't believe that the information on the outside of an envelope is private date, it's public because it's necessary for routing the mail and by nature it's public; going into someone's mailbox is very probably a crime or at least hideously rude behavior.
If all they were basing this marketing system off was the 'envelope' (i.e: the IP Addresses and/or ports that you communicate with) then I wouldn't be concerned about it. I'd be annoyed, but not concerned per say.
That's not what they are doing though. They are doing deep packet inspection. Not only do they know you are communicating with Slashdot.org, they know what stories you are reading or what comments (even AC) you are posting. And all of this information is used to compile a profile for you that is then used to target ads.
Even if you are in the small minority of people that wouldn't have a problem with that, don't you see how wrong it is of them to do this? Without even notifying their users in any meaningful way?
Fedex and UPS open your packages to look at what you are shipping so they can sell that data to advertisers?
rather they're searching through it looking for things that look suspicious
Did you even bother to RTFA? Wait, dumb question around here. This has nothing to do with looking for 'suspicious activity'. The ISPs in question are allowing third-party companies to build profiles of their users by spying on their traffic in order to do targeted advertising.
1. Find his adress 2. Intercept his snailmail (which later is returned). 3. Scan it and post it to our small group of Slashdotters. 4. Ask him if he thinks that this is a violation of his privacy? 5. ?? 6. Profit!
7. Go directly to Federal-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison for postal fraud. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.
Seriously, if the USPS, UPS or Fedex started doing this can you imagine the outrage? Yet somehow it's ok to do it with electronic communications? WTF?
I can run Aero with no decrease in performance, even with a slew of applications open
I despise Aero. When I first saw it my first thought was that it was a lame attempt by Microsoft to look like Apple. When I actually got my hands on my own Vista machine the first thing I did was disable it and revert the machine back to the Windows 2000 UI. At least in that regard Vista is similar to XP -- the first thing I've always done with an XP machine is revert back to the classical Windows UI.
I guess I'm in the minority of people that care more about function than form.....
because school zone speed limits are often ridiculously slow
Oh, c'mon! You'll brook no argument from me on highway speeds being artificially low, but school zones? If you can't stand to slow down for the 30 seconds it takes to drive through a school zone then I don't really have much pity for you if you get ticketed.
Likewise, I have zero fucking sympathy for somebody that goes around a school bus with flashing lights.
That assumes the goal of police traps is slowing traffic down. It is not.
Uhh, it is sometimes. I do my fair share of speeding, but I'm open minded enough to assume that the police officer sitting outside the school zone at 7:30AM isn't primarily interested in revenue collection.....
Look, you're talking to a group of asshats who are too damned lazy to watch the speed limit or get up in time for work so they mustn't violate said speed limit
Hey, I've seen my fair share of asshats on the road but I don't think speeding automatically qualifies you as one.
In many areas the speed limits are artificially low and/or the flow of traffic precludes obeying the speed limit unless you enjoy people closing on you at 15-20mph and flipping you off as they pass.....
Yes, its so easy stereotype driving patterns for all the thousands of police officers and identify those patterns on a black speck. Sry, i call BS. Your not smart enough to outsmart the system on your own.
Uhh, actually it really is that easy most of the time to spot them if you pay attention.
Even the unmarked cars are typically Crown Vics and they almost always have a spotlight (or two) mounted near the side-view mirrors. How many civilian Crown Vic police interceptors have you seen with spotlights and radio antennas on them?
Too bad your radar detector is becoming next to useless in many states. Here in NY the State Police all use Laser now.
A lot of radar detectors have laser warnings but in my experience they generally go off when your car is painted -- not when the guy ahead of you is -- and in that scenario the beeping radar detector really serves no other purpose then to give you a heads-up to start looking for a place to pull over.....
Call it all you want. This exact same configuration on my XP machine would have been under 512 megs -- typically around 400-450. FF is the biggest memory pig of the programs I have running (although Office 2007's programs aren't that far behind) but even with FF I've found XP to be quite usable with 512MB of ram. 1GB is obviously ideal but you can get away with 512 for normal surfing/productivity tasks.
the side bar, and the Task Manager in Vista tells you the % of Ram used unlike XP
Uhh, the task manager in XP also told you how much RAM you were using, although I honestly can't recall if it gave you the %'age or not (not near an XP machine right now to check).
See, you've used the time honored Slashdot tradition of daring the moderators to mod you down. Such statements display a remarkable understanding of/. politics and show that you aren't afraid to go against the group. I'm hard pressed to think of a better way to ensure that your comment winds up with postive moderation -- short of a 4 digit UID, large cash contributions or being a former actor from Star Trek: The Next Generation;)
Statements like "don't worry, I've got karma to burn" or "how long until I get modded down?" seem to be particularly effective;)
Why do people constantly bash on Vista. It runs great on my computer and I have no problems with it
I have to say that I've gotten it here at the office and I haven't noticed any major problems with it. Take that with a grain of salt though because my environment doesn't involve any legacy software.
It's actually remarkably usable once you disable the Vista UI and return it to a Windows 2000 look (I never used the XP UI either), though it is a resource pig. I'm using over a gig of ram right now just for Outlook, a few putty sessions, Pidgin and Firefox. On XP I'd still be under 512.
All that said, after having used it for two months I really don't see any compelling new feature or reason to upgrade from XP -- particularly when Vista will require much more powerful iron to run as fast. Factor that in with all of the anti-consumer "features" (*cough* protected media path *cough*) added in by Microsoft and I'd still have a hard time recommending it to anybody and I doubt I'll be upgrading at home for the foreseeable future.
Ignorance and blatant disregard for how something works seems to be what the internet is for in todays society
OTOH if all the bloggers are for the war then they should stop whining about taxes, especially those with "support the troop" stickers.
I'll go one further. Anybody that supports the war should volunteer to pay more taxes to finance it.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves with the Bush Administration. If the 'War on Terror' is worth fighting then it's worth paying for. FDR didn't respond to Pearl Harbor with a tax cut. Hell during WW2 the highest tax rate reached ninety-four percent. And Bush wouldn't even consider reversing his own ill advised tax cuts to help pay for the war.
You didn't say it directly, but you did compare Obama's preacher, Rev. Wright to Jerry Falwell.
I'm getting a little tired of people putting words into my mouth. I didn't "compare" them. The GP quoted Rev. Wright's questionable statements about 9/11 in the middle of a rant about "the left". It's only fair to find a similar quote from a religious figure on the right.
Obama and Wright were clearly buddies. Falwell and McCain are not.
Again, at what point in my original post did I bring up McCain? Or Obama for that matter? You are making connections that I never did and implying that I said things I did not.
they do go out of their way to represent all sides
Finding some far-right wing nutcase who screams at some far-left nutcase is not "representing" all sides. And since when did the news media need to "represent" anything? Their job is to report the news.
Downmodding because you disagree with posts is not
You must be new here;)
Neither is pushing hate onto the other side ("McCain is the enemy" as an earlier poster [slashdot.org] put it. GGGP or something).
Maybe you should read my reply to said earlier poster before you assume that I'm in the camp of calling John McCain an enemy. I agree with that man on very little but I do have a fair amount of respect for him.
Hypocritical fuckers, coming off of their own holocaust just to perpetuate one against the Palestinians.
Hey, I'm not the biggest fan of Israel either, but comparing their occupation/settlement of Palestinian areas to the mass-murder of six million people is just a little bit extreme, don't ya think?
Find me the Auschwitz of the occupied territories if you actually believe that flamebait you are spewing.
Saddam invaded Kuwait. We invaded Iraq in 1991. We did not invade Baghdad, take out Saddam, and completely conquer the country, but we did invade Iraq
*Gosh* you mean we actually had the nerve to cross into their territory during a war?!?! The nerve! We should have fought the whole war in the Kuwait and Saudi Arabia so they'd know exactly where our forces were coming from and could mass to stop them. And don't even get me started on all those poor innocent Axis countries we 'invaded' during WW2.
McCain would merely be a bad president; we survived Bush, we could certainly survive McCain. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is a walking embodiment of the repudiation of the American Revolution itself. Bushclintonbushclintonbushclintonbushclinton - President or Vice President since 1980
Actually, right there is another problem I have with Hillary. For as long as I can realistically remember (I was born in 1981) this country has been run by a Bush or a Clinton. 4 years of Bush, 8 years of Clinton, 8 years of Bush II. 20 years of two families sharing control over this country.
WTF is wrong with that picture? What happens if Hillary wins? Is Jeb gonna run in 2016? Then the Bush twins in 2024? Or maybe Chelsea? When do we say that enough is enough and we want fresh blood? And how sad is it that the 71 year old white male Republican is more representative of fresh blood then the candidate supported by roughly half of the Democratic Party?
We need to end political dynasties. Democratic or Republican.
they are also mad as hell at their own party (Pelosi and Reid, in particular), for what they regard as either lack of backbone or complicity
I can get pretty damn annoyed with Reid with at times (he's next to useless) but I'm wondering if you are in the mad-at-Pelosi camp?
My opinions of her were neutral/mildly negative for awhile but I've started to come around on her -- she stopped telecom immunity and has been a rare voice of reason during the Democratic Primaries.
Slashdot Mirror
I honestly don't know enough about it to debate you on the other points you bought up but this one seems questionable. The whole point of an endowment is to finance your activities off the earnings of that money so it's sustainable over the long run. You don't spend the money itself.
Sure. Warren Buffet and Bill & Melinda Gates come to mind.
Maybe it is and they just haven't found us. Maybe the light speed limitation really can't be overcome. Maybe they know we are here and have (wisely?) chosen not to make contact. Maybe we are the "first ones" and sentient life hasn't evolved anywhere else yet. Maybe we aren't fat enough to harvest just yet ;)
Could be anything, really :P
You mean people sometimes use /. as something other than a heavy work based slacking device?
There, fixed that for you. And yes, I'm at work right now ;)
To each their own, but I've never seen TV as being worth what it seems to cost in modern times. I can recall getting basic cable (40-60 channels) for as little as $20 just ten years ago -- after Time Warner bought out our local cable company it went up to $40. Now it starts at $55 for basic cable and $65 for digital cable.
I ditched it three years ago and went down to 'lifeline' service (just the network stations) and haven't looked back. Whatever cable shows I can't get I can wait for the DVD releases and get through Netflix -- and now there seems to be digital avenues opening up (The Daily Show & South Park webpages come to mind).
Before taxes and fees I'm assuming? Half the reason I don't have a landline anymore is the taxes and fees (state and local, federal, FCC line charge, USF charges) tripled the bill. I can get 'message rate' service (pay 9 cents for each local call) from Verizon for less than $10/mo. For that price it's worthwhile keeping POTS around (cell phone battery dies, power goes out, etc, etc) -- but after all of the fees are applied it winds up costing $30-$35/mo, which is too much money to justify spending on something I rarely use.
People in those neighborhoods also tend to be the types that will pay for triple play packages they probably don't need. Landline service, cable TV service with all the fixings and the fastest internet service they can afford. They are hugely profitable for the tel/cable-cos.
By contrast, I've never gotten priority treatment or pricing from either Time Warner or Verizon. Some people at Time Warner barely bothered to hide their contempt for me because I wouldn't let them talk me into buying cable service -- I've got the network stations and that's it ($5.99/mo), which I wouldn't even have if I could get decent reception with antenna. Ditto for Verizon as I only have dry-loop DSL service with them, though they've never wasted as much of my time trying to sell me stuff I don't want as Time Warner has (some TW reps refuse to take no for an answer).
If all they were basing this marketing system off was the 'envelope' (i.e: the IP Addresses and/or ports that you communicate with) then I wouldn't be concerned about it. I'd be annoyed, but not concerned per say.
That's not what they are doing though. They are doing deep packet inspection. Not only do they know you are communicating with Slashdot.org, they know what stories you are reading or what comments (even AC) you are posting. And all of this information is used to compile a profile for you that is then used to target ads.
Even if you are in the small minority of people that wouldn't have a problem with that, don't you see how wrong it is of them to do this? Without even notifying their users in any meaningful way?
Fedex and UPS open your packages to look at what you are shipping so they can sell that data to advertisers?
rather they're searching through it looking for things that look suspiciousDid you even bother to RTFA? Wait, dumb question around here. This has nothing to do with looking for 'suspicious activity'. The ISPs in question are allowing third-party companies to build profiles of their users by spying on their traffic in order to do targeted advertising.
7. Go directly to Federal-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison for postal fraud. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.
Seriously, if the USPS, UPS or Fedex started doing this can you imagine the outrage? Yet somehow it's ok to do it with electronic communications? WTF?
I despise Aero. When I first saw it my first thought was that it was a lame attempt by Microsoft to look like Apple. When I actually got my hands on my own Vista machine the first thing I did was disable it and revert the machine back to the Windows 2000 UI. At least in that regard Vista is similar to XP -- the first thing I've always done with an XP machine is revert back to the classical Windows UI.
I guess I'm in the minority of people that care more about function than form.....
Oh, c'mon! You'll brook no argument from me on highway speeds being artificially low, but school zones? If you can't stand to slow down for the 30 seconds it takes to drive through a school zone then I don't really have much pity for you if you get ticketed.
Likewise, I have zero fucking sympathy for somebody that goes around a school bus with flashing lights.
Uhh, it is sometimes. I do my fair share of speeding, but I'm open minded enough to assume that the police officer sitting outside the school zone at 7:30AM isn't primarily interested in revenue collection.....
Hey, I've seen my fair share of asshats on the road but I don't think speeding automatically qualifies you as one.
In many areas the speed limits are artificially low and/or the flow of traffic precludes obeying the speed limit unless you enjoy people closing on you at 15-20mph and flipping you off as they pass.....
Uhh, actually it really is that easy most of the time to spot them if you pay attention.
Even the unmarked cars are typically Crown Vics and they almost always have a spotlight (or two) mounted near the side-view mirrors. How many civilian Crown Vic police interceptors have you seen with spotlights and radio antennas on them?
Too bad your radar detector is becoming next to useless in many states. Here in NY the State Police all use Laser now.
A lot of radar detectors have laser warnings but in my experience they generally go off when your car is painted -- not when the guy ahead of you is -- and in that scenario the beeping radar detector really serves no other purpose then to give you a heads-up to start looking for a place to pull over.....
Call it all you want. This exact same configuration on my XP machine would have been under 512 megs -- typically around 400-450. FF is the biggest memory pig of the programs I have running (although Office 2007's programs aren't that far behind) but even with FF I've found XP to be quite usable with 512MB of ram. 1GB is obviously ideal but you can get away with 512 for normal surfing/productivity tasks.
the side bar, and the Task Manager in Vista tells you the % of Ram used unlike XPUhh, the task manager in XP also told you how much RAM you were using, although I honestly can't recall if it gave you the %'age or not (not near an XP machine right now to check).
I wouldn't worry about that.
See, you've used the time honored Slashdot tradition of daring the moderators to mod you down. Such statements display a remarkable understanding of /. politics and show that you aren't afraid to go against the group. I'm hard pressed to think of a better way to ensure that your comment winds up with postive moderation -- short of a 4 digit UID, large cash contributions or being a former actor from Star Trek: The Next Generation ;)
Statements like "don't worry, I've got karma to burn" or "how long until I get modded down?" seem to be particularly effective ;)
I have to say that I've gotten it here at the office and I haven't noticed any major problems with it. Take that with a grain of salt though because my environment doesn't involve any legacy software.
It's actually remarkably usable once you disable the Vista UI and return it to a Windows 2000 look (I never used the XP UI either), though it is a resource pig. I'm using over a gig of ram right now just for Outlook, a few putty sessions, Pidgin and Firefox. On XP I'd still be under 512.
All that said, after having used it for two months I really don't see any compelling new feature or reason to upgrade from XP -- particularly when Vista will require much more powerful iron to run as fast. Factor that in with all of the anti-consumer "features" (*cough* protected media path *cough*) added in by Microsoft and I'd still have a hard time recommending it to anybody and I doubt I'll be upgrading at home for the foreseeable future.
Ignorance and blatant disregard for how something works seems to be what the internet is for in todays societyYou must be new here ;) (sorry, couldn't resist)
I'll go one further. Anybody that supports the war should volunteer to pay more taxes to finance it.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves with the Bush Administration. If the 'War on Terror' is worth fighting then it's worth paying for. FDR didn't respond to Pearl Harbor with a tax cut. Hell during WW2 the highest tax rate reached ninety-four percent. And Bush wouldn't even consider reversing his own ill advised tax cuts to help pay for the war.
I'm getting a little tired of people putting words into my mouth. I didn't "compare" them. The GP quoted Rev. Wright's questionable statements about 9/11 in the middle of a rant about "the left". It's only fair to find a similar quote from a religious figure on the right.
Obama and Wright were clearly buddies. Falwell and McCain are not.Again, at what point in my original post did I bring up McCain? Or Obama for that matter? You are making connections that I never did and implying that I said things I did not.
they do go out of their way to represent all sidesFinding some far-right wing nutcase who screams at some far-left nutcase is not "representing" all sides. And since when did the news media need to "represent" anything? Their job is to report the news.
Downmodding because you disagree with posts is notYou must be new here ;)
Neither is pushing hate onto the other side ("McCain is the enemy" as an earlier poster [slashdot.org] put it. GGGP or something).Maybe you should read my reply to said earlier poster before you assume that I'm in the camp of calling John McCain an enemy. I agree with that man on very little but I do have a fair amount of respect for him.
Hey, I'm not the biggest fan of Israel either, but comparing their occupation/settlement of Palestinian areas to the mass-murder of six million people is just a little bit extreme, don't ya think?
Find me the Auschwitz of the occupied territories if you actually believe that flamebait you are spewing.
*Gosh* you mean we actually had the nerve to cross into their territory during a war?!?! The nerve! We should have fought the whole war in the Kuwait and Saudi Arabia so they'd know exactly where our forces were coming from and could mass to stop them. And don't even get me started on all those poor innocent Axis countries we 'invaded' during WW2.
Actually, right there is another problem I have with Hillary. For as long as I can realistically remember (I was born in 1981) this country has been run by a Bush or a Clinton. 4 years of Bush, 8 years of Clinton, 8 years of Bush II. 20 years of two families sharing control over this country.
WTF is wrong with that picture? What happens if Hillary wins? Is Jeb gonna run in 2016? Then the Bush twins in 2024? Or maybe Chelsea? When do we say that enough is enough and we want fresh blood? And how sad is it that the 71 year old white male Republican is more representative of fresh blood then the candidate supported by roughly half of the Democratic Party?
We need to end political dynasties. Democratic or Republican.
I can get pretty damn annoyed with Reid with at times (he's next to useless) but I'm wondering if you are in the mad-at-Pelosi camp?
My opinions of her were neutral/mildly negative for awhile but I've started to come around on her -- she stopped telecom immunity and has been a rare voice of reason during the Democratic Primaries.