Sure... then what you will have is various lobbying groups and/or companies which will give people FREE if they can show that they voted for a particular candidate and what do you have? An election that's fixed by offering the millions of sheep of this country free burgers/discounts/shirts/whatever to vote for what that group wants.
I like the idea of the paper receipt that drops behind glass so the person can see it, then goes into a bin. That way, you can't bribe voters for their votes.
I had Dish Network for about 3 years when I decided to switch to DirectTV (because of their Tivo promotion).
I've now had DirectTV for about 6 months. For about $50 (plus about $30 shipping) I received an integrated DirectTV w/ Tivo (HDVR2) which allows you to record two shows at the same time.
With BOTH Dish Network and DirectTV I did NOT have problems with rain fade, wind, etc. I live in the Seattle area and with the rain we get I just don't lose my reception.
I do like DirectTV better than Dish Network mainly because of the integrated dual-tuner Tivo (although I don't like the menus as much as the PersonalTV from Dish Network).
Also, at least for me, with DirectTV I only have to point at one satellite. With Dish Network, I had to point at two. What that means is that with Dish Network I did have to tweak it quite a bit to get BOTH signals above 85% so that I would never lose reception during wind/rain storms. With DirectTV, I get over 90% and have never had any issues at all with reception.
I also have noticed that my local channels (Seattle) are more clear than with Dish Network (less compression) but that may vary with region. Oh, with DirectTV they have a great package (Total Choice Plus Locals) that's about $40 (a bit cheaper than Dish Network with locals).
I've never gone back to cable and have been 100% satisfied with Satellite (especially with the dual tuner Tivo built in).
I CAN'T REFERENCE THE QUOTE unless I can put more than 120 characters on my signature, and I'm NOT going to add the reference for every post I make.
You must be very proud of yourself nonetheless.;P
What sort of radiation dose would an astronaut receive if he was located outside the Van Allen Belt?
Solar flares were a serious concern to the Apollo astronauts, who were at risk while traveling to the Moon.
Solar flares are most deadly because of the proton flux, which would be blocked, but which travels much slower than lightspeed. If you see X-rays from a solar flare, it tells you that you have an hour or so to get into a shielded environment before the big storm hits.
We will not be scared of these "solar evil-doers." The Sun is part of an "axis of stellar evil" that we must stamp out. We will make no distinction between solar flares, and the stars that sponsor these flares. Our nation will launch a campaign to stamp out all stellar terrorism in our galaxy. These nukyular furnaces of fear will no longer terrorize our nation, or Texas. Anybody wanna peanut?
I really do feel bad for the RIAA members (not the RIAA itself). They are stuck having to eventually face the fact that they are 80% of the way to extinction. Can anyone realy imagine a future 50 years down the road where anyone is interested in buying a piece of plastic with music on it?
Yes, storing it in a way that does not rot too fast or get deleted for video game space is valuable, but I see the future retailers of music being the clubs that host musicians. They should strike a deal with the performers that they host to sell the music via a Web site and via a kiosk at the show.
Here's one business model for that:
Club makes USB-fobs that contain the customer's name, credit info (or a key that they look up the credit info in their database with) and email address. The customer goes to a show and likes it, so they walk over to the kiosk and plug in their fob to order the "album" on the way out. The kiosk notes the purchase in the database and sends email to the customer with a link to download the music from the Web site.
Quick, easy, and here's the best part: you don't care about file-swappers because you get the customer at the exact point where they decide they like the music. You don't care if the 5 billion people who never come to your club swap this music around. What you care about is that your club (and the artist who gets a cut) made some extra money from a customer. You win, they win and the band wins.
But, I still feel bad for the labels who are doomed because they can't make a "star" anymore out of some semi-talented performer who they can stick on MTV. Or more to the point, they can make the star, but there's soon going to be no point in terms of selling CDs.
I wonder if this mean that Novell will take it's Novell Storage System and develop it on SUSE? It certainly is feature packed. Now before you all start banging on me, remember that Novell for years was the king of file system services.
Just some of the features:
Compression and fast decompression
Hiearchical storage system integration
Advanced access control model, with
granular access control with inheritance and inheritance filters
Copy on Write
File system snapshot
Journaling
Transaction tracking
DFS, Junctions and yes! symbolic links!
Disk, directory and user level quotas
Fast mount and repair times
Name spaces for MAC, NFS, NCP
Native CIFS, NFS, AFP and WebDAV protocol support
Clustering support
Software mirroring and RAID0 striping
Fast! State of the art caching and read-ahead algorithms
Low memory requirements
Scalable: 64-bit, 8 terabyte sizes, pooling etc
I could go on... About the only thing it is missing is encryption. Of course it remains to be seen whether the port to Linux will be successful, and whether Novell has the sense to make it open source.
I *mostly* support the EFF. BUT when they started promoting compulsary licensing, I decided not to support them. Perhaps they should revamp their support structure, such that if you donate money, you can direct it to a specific cause. And in such as way as the causes you *don't* believe don't indirectly benefit (by sharing the same overhead expenses, etc.)
I'm not going to waste a penny on an organization that promotes ideas completely contrary to what I believe in.
I mostly support the EFF. But when they started promoting compulsary licencing, I decided not to support them. Perhaps they should revamp their support structure, such that if you donate money, you can direct it to a specific cause. And in such as way as the causes you *don't* believe don't indirectly benefit (by sharing the same overhead expenses, etc.) I'm not going to waste a penny on an organization that promotes ideas completely contrary to what I believe in.
Pending: your vote is now the property of Diebold, Inc. Any attempt on your part to ascertain the disposition of your vote is hereby declared to be in violation of federal law, e.g., the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
You have the right not to vote. Any vote you make can be used against you in a court of law. The judge presiding in such a court of law may be appointed by Diebold, Inc., and need not require a jury, but if a jury is summoned, it need not be a jury of your peers.
By acting to vote you consent to our determining whether your vote is valid, and in the event it is judged not to be valid, you consent to our voiding your vote and further voiding your right to vote in the future.
You furthermore acknowledge that owing to storage and bandwidth limitations that Diebold, Inc., may experience, your vote may be digitally compressed in a way such that your true intent in casting the vote may be lost. If such an eventuality should occur, your vote may be determined using statistical data derived from any source we deem appropriate or convenient.
You have the right to protest if your vote is cancelled, altered, or in any way modified as the result of such action on our part, however, you hereby acknowledge that in such an eventuality, Diebold, Inc. may determine that your right to vote is deleterious to democracy as implement by Diebold, Inc., and therefore may be considered to be an overt act against the national security of these United States.
I never understand why someone would mod an Xbox to put something else on it. People are so excited to use Linux on an Xbox. And for what?
ORN: So what have you been playing lately on your Xbox?
BH: Linux. I don't use my Xbox to play games.
I used to own a copy of Dead or Alive 3, but I gave that to a friend after I got bored of it. I also tried Halo once and bored of it pretty quickly. I tend to play the Nintendo GameCube the most; its games are the most fun. I am still working on beating the new Zelda.
Why would you buy one of these to put linux on? If your not playing games wiht it why not do one of the following:
1) Use a small older computer from ebay and install linux
2) Build a computer and install linux
3) Buy a PS2 with the Linux Kit
4) Buy a dreamcast and burn your linux boot cd
And even then WHAT IS THE POINT? It seems like people just do this because THEY CAN and are not asking whether they SHOULD be doing this?
And I still don;t see the use for it. What are you possibly going to do with Linux on an Xbox that you couldn't do with Linux on your computer?
The same argument can be said for using a Mod chip to put OS X on the Xbox2.
IBM was going to come out with personal powerpc systems which would even have a common motherboard reference design with Macs. The volume of production would drive down costs dramatically. But IBM didn't and Apple basically got screwed on that deal.
Interestly enough, the reason IBM canned the personal powerpc systems was that OS2 for PPC completely blew its schedule several times over. IBM had a personal AIX edition for PPC ready but chose not to go with that. The reason. Unix would never make it as a mainstream operating system for PCs.
FCC:
We charge that AT&T has violated Telemarketing Rules(tm) when AT&T marketers called 29 customers on 78 different occasions after those customers had signed up on the Do Not Call list. We propose a $780,000 fine against AT&T.
Judge:
"What say You AT&T?"
AT&T:
"Ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider: (pulling down a diagram) this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk, but Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now, think about that. That does not make sense!"
Why would a Wookiee - an eight foot tall Wookiee - want to live on Endor with a bunch of two foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense!
But more importantly, you have to ask yourself: what does that have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense!
Look at me, I'm a lawyer defending a major telecommunications company, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca. Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense. None of this makes sense.
And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberating and conjugating the Emancipation Proclamation - does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense.
"If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests."
Jury:
"We The Jury believe that Chewbacca lives on Endor."
The important thing in democracy is not the voting, it's the counting.
Any technology introduced to improve the act of voting cannot make the act of counting less transparent or democracy suffers.
It is apparent that Diebold's systems (not to mention Diebold's paranoia for secrecy) render the act of counting less accountable and less transparent. Ergo, democracy suffers.
If used in a close election - where exit polling and other secondary measurements are unable to confirm the results of the counting - the wrong person might actually get elected President of the United States of America.
With no sense of responsibility to the coutry at large, this illegitimate President might launch a series of Napoleonic wars to to compensate for his own feelings of inadequacy.
I digress into fantasy... the little blue ones I washed down with all those adult beverages must be kicking in.
The progress that these guys have made in 5 years and the sheer volume of quality code is simply amazing. What are these guys doing right as compared to all the other projects? They even stick to their development and release schedules better than most commercial companies. And despite everyone calling for the death of C++, KDE is the shining example of what can be accomplished in that language. I seriously doubt it could have been constructed in any other language and produce as quick and relatively error-free code as these guys have produced.
A quick Google search turns up the history. To summarize, it's a matter of whether or not commercial interests have the same rights as citizens. The Nike case that the Supreme Court recently dimissed highlighted very passionate arguments from bothsides of the issue of Corporate Personhood.
The DNC does restrict speech. It restricts the ability of a telemarketer to call you up and talk to you. "Free speech" in its most literal form cannot be taken to mean anything different. However, the Supreme Court has ruled numerous times that several forms of speech are not protected. Libelous or slanderous speech is not protected. Speech that leads directly to physical harm, such as the classic "yelling, 'Fire!' in a crowded theater" is not protected. Speech that somehow violates your property rights, such as political or religious campaigning on your doorstep or in your house is not protected. For many years, neither was commercial speech in many ways, and discrimination of content based on the fact that it is commercial in nature has been allowed. This is the discrimination that the telemarketers seek to attack.
1. Get a Caller ID Box. Your telco probably will charge you a fee for sending the information, since as they see it, you might decide not to answer the phone based on who is calling and therefore they will not earn the connection charge on the call.
2. Block Withheld Numbers if you live in a jurisdiction where withholding your number is still legal. Your telco probably will charge you for this, but it's worth it. {before I had mine blocked, I used to say to Number Withheld: "Are you a paedophile? Because your number is withheld." That saw them off. On my mobile, where there is no such service available, I have to resort to doing an impression of a recorded announcement: "Anonymous calls are not welcome on this line. If your business is important you may ring back without withholding your number. Goodbye."
3. Don't say anything if you don't recognise the caller's number. This spins them out, because they think it could be an answering machine. A legitimate caller will ask for you by name. A sleazeball telemarketer will just hang up.
4. Ask them how they got your number. This distracts them from the purpose of the call and maybe gets them into an infinite loop.
5. If all else fails, remember that it is your line, and you are under no obligation to be polite with unwanted callers. Any obligation of politeness would fall on the originator, not the recipient.
I think the best solution would be for the do-not-call list to be in the phone directory, by placing a symbol next to the numbers of people who did not wish to receive unsolictited sales calls. I'm not so anti-social that I'd consider going ex-directory, because that would jeopardise things for people who might have a legitimate reason to call me {and because I like looking up my name in the new phone book every 18 months or so, it gives me a kick without harming anyone else}. Having the "do not call" list in the phone book itself would be almost foolproof. Everyone with a phone line gets the phone book, so there would be no shortage of witnesses to the fact that your number was on the list. The only downside is that you might have to wait till the new directory was published in order to get your name properly DNC'd. But the telemarketing companies could be made to subscribe to an update list as a condition of their operating licence.
Slashdot Mirror
Oops, first line should read "... FREE stuff..."
I like the idea of the paper receipt that drops behind glass so the person can see it, then goes into a bin. That way, you can't bribe voters for their votes.
I've now had DirectTV for about 6 months. For about $50 (plus about $30 shipping) I received an integrated DirectTV w/ Tivo (HDVR2) which allows you to record two shows at the same time.
With BOTH Dish Network and DirectTV I did NOT have problems with rain fade, wind, etc. I live in the Seattle area and with the rain we get I just don't lose my reception.
I do like DirectTV better than Dish Network mainly because of the integrated dual-tuner Tivo (although I don't like the menus as much as the PersonalTV from Dish Network).
Also, at least for me, with DirectTV I only have to point at one satellite. With Dish Network, I had to point at two. What that means is that with Dish Network I did have to tweak it quite a bit to get BOTH signals above 85% so that I would never lose reception during wind/rain storms. With DirectTV, I get over 90% and have never had any issues at all with reception.
I also have noticed that my local channels (Seattle) are more clear than with Dish Network (less compression) but that may vary with region.
Oh, with DirectTV they have a great package (Total Choice Plus Locals) that's about $40 (a bit cheaper than Dish Network with locals).
I've never gone back to cable and have been 100% satisfied with Satellite (especially with the dual tuner Tivo built in).
My $0.2
Here is a web site and project that tracks how IPv4 addresses are allocated and misused, i.e. hijacked: http://www.completewhois.com/statistics/index.htm .
The way I read it, a huge percentage of IPv4 addresses are not even being used...
I CAN'T REFERENCE THE QUOTE unless I can put more than 120 characters on my signature, and I'm NOT going to add the reference for every post I make. You must be very proud of yourself nonetheless. ;P
Solar flares were a serious concern to the Apollo astronauts, who were at risk while traveling to the Moon.
Solar flares are most deadly because of the proton flux, which would be blocked, but which travels much slower than lightspeed. If you see X-rays from a solar flare, it tells you that you have an hour or so to get into a shielded environment before the big storm hits.
We will not be scared of these "solar evil-doers." The Sun is part of an "axis of stellar evil" that we must stamp out. We will make no distinction between solar flares, and the stars that sponsor these flares. Our nation will launch a campaign to stamp out all stellar terrorism in our galaxy. These nukyular furnaces of fear will no longer terrorize our nation, or Texas. Anybody wanna peanut?
I really do feel bad for the RIAA members (not the RIAA itself). They are stuck having to eventually face the fact that they are 80% of the way to extinction. Can anyone realy imagine a future 50 years down the road where anyone is interested in buying a piece of plastic with music on it?
Yes, storing it in a way that does not rot too fast or get deleted for video game space is valuable, but I see the future retailers of music being the clubs that host musicians. They should strike a deal with the performers that they host to sell the music via a Web site and via a kiosk at the show.
Here's one business model for that:
Club makes USB-fobs that contain the customer's name, credit info (or a key that they look up the credit info in their database with) and email address. The customer goes to a show and likes it, so they walk over to the kiosk and plug in their fob to order the "album" on the way out. The kiosk notes the purchase in the database and sends email to the customer with a link to download the music from the Web site.
Quick, easy, and here's the best part: you don't care about file-swappers because you get the customer at the exact point where they decide they like the music. You don't care if the 5 billion people who never come to your club swap this music around. What you care about is that your club (and the artist who gets a cut) made some extra money from a customer. You win, they win and the band wins.
But, I still feel bad for the labels who are doomed because they can't make a "star" anymore out of some semi-talented performer who they can stick on MTV. Or more to the point, they can make the star, but there's soon going to be no point in terms of selling CDs.
I could go on... About the only thing it is missing is encryption. Of course it remains to be seen whether the port to Linux will be successful, and whether Novell has the sense to make it open source.
I *mostly* support the EFF. BUT when they started promoting compulsary licensing, I decided not to support them. Perhaps they should revamp their support structure, such that if you donate money, you can direct it to a specific cause. And in such as way as the causes you *don't* believe don't indirectly benefit (by sharing the same overhead expenses, etc.)
I'm not going to waste a penny on an organization that promotes ideas completely contrary to what I believe in.
I mostly support the EFF. But when they started promoting compulsary licencing, I decided not to support them. Perhaps they should revamp their support structure, such that if you donate money, you can direct it to a specific cause. And in such as way as the causes you *don't* believe don't indirectly benefit (by sharing the same overhead expenses, etc.) I'm not going to waste a penny on an organization that promotes ideas completely contrary to what I believe in.
Pending: your vote is now the property of Diebold, Inc. Any attempt on your part to ascertain the disposition of your vote is hereby declared to be in violation of federal law, e.g., the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
You have the right not to vote. Any vote you make can be used against you in a court of law. The judge presiding in such a court of law may be appointed by Diebold, Inc., and need not require a jury, but if a jury is summoned, it need not be a jury of your peers.
By acting to vote you consent to our determining whether your vote is valid, and in the event it is judged not to be valid, you consent to our voiding your vote and further voiding your right to vote in the future.
You furthermore acknowledge that owing to storage and bandwidth limitations that Diebold, Inc., may experience, your vote may be digitally compressed in a way such that your true intent in casting the vote may be lost. If such an eventuality should occur, your vote may be determined using statistical data derived from any source we deem appropriate or convenient.
You have the right to protest if your vote is cancelled, altered, or in any way modified as the result of such action on our part, however, you hereby acknowledge that in such an eventuality, Diebold, Inc. may determine that your right to vote is deleterious to democracy as implement by Diebold, Inc., and therefore may be considered to be an overt act against the national security of these United States.
You have 10 seconds to comply.
God Bless America.
ORN: So what have you been playing lately on your Xbox?
BH: Linux. I don't use my Xbox to play games.
I used to own a copy of Dead or Alive 3, but I gave that to a friend after I got bored of it. I also tried Halo once and bored of it pretty quickly. I tend to play the Nintendo GameCube the most; its games are the most fun. I am still working on beating the new Zelda.
Why would you buy one of these to put linux on? If your not playing games wiht it why not do one of the following:
1) Use a small older computer from ebay and install linux
2) Build a computer and install linux
3) Buy a PS2 with the Linux Kit
4) Buy a dreamcast and burn your linux boot cd
And even then WHAT IS THE POINT? It seems like people just do this because THEY CAN and are not asking whether they SHOULD be doing this?
And I still don;t see the use for it. What are you possibly going to do with Linux on an Xbox that you couldn't do with Linux on your computer?
The same argument can be said for using a Mod chip to put OS X on the Xbox2.
Interestly enough, the reason IBM canned the personal powerpc systems was that OS2 for PPC completely blew its schedule several times over. IBM had a personal AIX edition for PPC ready but chose not to go with that. The reason. Unix would never make it as a mainstream operating system for PCs.
Judge: "What say You AT&T?"
AT&T: "Ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider: (pulling down a diagram) this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk, but Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now, think about that. That does not make sense!"
Why would a Wookiee - an eight foot tall Wookiee - want to live on Endor with a bunch of two foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense!
But more importantly, you have to ask yourself: what does that have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense!
Look at me, I'm a lawyer defending a major telecommunications company, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca. Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense. None of this makes sense.
And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberating and conjugating the Emancipation Proclamation - does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense.
"If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests."
Jury: "We The Jury believe that Chewbacca lives on Endor."
Judge: "Judgement is for the Defense."
===================
Any technology introduced to improve the act of voting cannot make the act of counting less transparent or democracy suffers.
It is apparent that Diebold's systems (not to mention Diebold's paranoia for secrecy) render the act of counting less accountable and less transparent. Ergo, democracy suffers.
If used in a close election - where exit polling and other secondary measurements are unable to confirm the results of the counting - the wrong person might actually get elected President of the United States of America.
With no sense of responsibility to the coutry at large, this illegitimate President might launch a series of Napoleonic wars to to compensate for his own feelings of inadequacy.
I digress into fantasy... the little blue ones I washed down with all those adult beverages must be kicking in.
The progress that these guys have made in 5 years and the sheer volume of quality code is simply amazing. What are these guys doing right as compared to all the other projects? They even stick to their development and release schedules better than most commercial companies. And despite everyone calling for the death of C++, KDE is the shining example of what can be accomplished in that language. I seriously doubt it could have been constructed in any other language and produce as quick and relatively error-free code as these guys have produced.
A quick Google search turns up the history. To summarize, it's a matter of whether or not commercial interests have the same rights as citizens. The Nike case that the Supreme Court recently dimissed highlighted very passionate arguments from both sides of the issue of Corporate Personhood.
The DNC does restrict speech. It restricts the ability of a telemarketer to call you up and talk to you. "Free speech" in its most literal form cannot be taken to mean anything different. However, the Supreme Court has ruled numerous times that several forms of speech are not protected. Libelous or slanderous speech is not protected. Speech that leads directly to physical harm, such as the classic "yelling, 'Fire!' in a crowded theater" is not protected. Speech that somehow violates your property rights, such as political or religious campaigning on your doorstep or in your house is not protected. For many years, neither was commercial speech in many ways, and discrimination of content based on the fact that it is commercial in nature has been allowed. This is the discrimination that the telemarketers seek to attack.
1. Get a Caller ID Box. Your telco probably will charge you a fee for sending the information, since as they see it, you might decide not to answer the phone based on who is calling and therefore they will not earn the connection charge on the call. 2. Block Withheld Numbers if you live in a jurisdiction where withholding your number is still legal. Your telco probably will charge you for this, but it's worth it. {before I had mine blocked, I used to say to Number Withheld: "Are you a paedophile? Because your number is withheld." That saw them off. On my mobile, where there is no such service available, I have to resort to doing an impression of a recorded announcement: "Anonymous calls are not welcome on this line. If your business is important you may ring back without withholding your number. Goodbye." 3. Don't say anything if you don't recognise the caller's number. This spins them out, because they think it could be an answering machine. A legitimate caller will ask for you by name. A sleazeball telemarketer will just hang up. 4. Ask them how they got your number. This distracts them from the purpose of the call and maybe gets them into an infinite loop. 5. If all else fails, remember that it is your line, and you are under no obligation to be polite with unwanted callers. Any obligation of politeness would fall on the originator, not the recipient. I think the best solution would be for the do-not-call list to be in the phone directory, by placing a symbol next to the numbers of people who did not wish to receive unsolictited sales calls. I'm not so anti-social that I'd consider going ex-directory, because that would jeopardise things for people who might have a legitimate reason to call me {and because I like looking up my name in the new phone book every 18 months or so, it gives me a kick without harming anyone else}. Having the "do not call" list in the phone book itself would be almost foolproof. Everyone with a phone line gets the phone book, so there would be no shortage of witnesses to the fact that your number was on the list. The only downside is that you might have to wait till the new directory was published in order to get your name properly DNC'd. But the telemarketing companies could be made to subscribe to an update list as a condition of their operating licence.