At last, someone picked up on it.;) On the upside, I seem to have spurred some proper discussion, althoguh that may just be because I've got one of the earlier posts.
I certainly did. Most of all I felt entertained. Sure, I thought about various issues surrounding warfare, in particular how we use it in entertainment media, but I've done the same thing after picking through an encyclopedia or playing Advance Wars.
Good point. I don't believe he made anyone aware of it, either, although there's a perfectly good system for that on the Wikipedia, so at the end of the day the only liable party is whoever made it up in the first place. Probably. (Hopefully?)
So he sat there and let people read it. If he was so bothered, why didn't he do something about it at the time? Like, you know, click the "Edit" button.
The trick in those situations is to take the effort (and slight cost, depending on what your phone situation is) to phone them up and start quoting the Sale of Goods Act to them. If the member of staff you're with is giving you problems, immediately ask for their supervisor. If they still give you trouble, gather together a lot of other dissatisfied customers and all email Watchdog about it.
This will still depend on the cable/sat companies wanting to provide this sort of service. Sky here in the UK only recently bowed to pressure to provide more flexible packages. Is there any suggestion that the US cable/sat companies are eager to provide the same?
With that in mind I'd say that both usages are valid, depending on whether you prefer to describe them as items or a sort of mass. I'm definitely in the "a lot of Lego attacked me" camp.
So, in order for the virtues of Firefox to be proclaimed to would-be switchers, they have to go to the website and download the commercial themselves? I doubt that's going to be particularly effective, as the limiting step is the same old word-of-mouth used to get people to look at the Firefox site in the first place.
Based on what has been suggested so far, I propose an "aliases list". Use absurdly commonplace strings to represent specific keyword-blocked artists/albums, and publish a lookup table. For example, "fish" could equate to "Kylie" and "the" could related to her most popular album at the time the lookup is published. Possible problem: all the false hits containing "The fish" when searching. Solution: search by file type and file size.
A little more hard work, but once again, a little thinking flattens the RIAA's spectacular uselessness. I think that they need a new body in charge of their anti-piracy initiative as they're clearly hopeless at it.
On one hand, it may not be much more useful than existing technology. On the other hand... microwaves! I don't know about the rest of you but when it comes to making my home absurdly futuristic, electric or gas heaters just don't cut it.
If I had mod points just now, you'd be recieving some. One of the most surprising things about the internet age is how it makes everything seem amazingly faulty. I think this is because of some expectation we have from the pre-internet days. Previously, when we'd hear about a half-dozen of an item going wrong, it'd be a half-dozen in our immediate neighbourhood, which would suggest a pretty big failure rate. Now we're still hearing about a half dozen going wrong, but that's a half-dozen in the whole internet, which represents a smaller failure rate.
I've seen a diagram of the entirety of known human biochemistry. Printed out you could merrily cover the outside of a house with those 5mm arrows and 10pt labels. Gazing upon that chart was like staring into the maw of some terrible Lovecraftian creature beyond comprehension.
My point? If you want to be able to cope with organic chemistry, I reccomend you deal with it one reaction at a time, and not try to link the whole thing together. Learning the whole reaction space is a daunting prospect. Learning the tools of functional group interconversion and retrosynthetic analysis isn't.
The RIAA saw fit to use ridiculously high fines to scare people away from downloading music; perhaps the ridiculously high fines here will scare music publishers away from DRM completely.
If NHS information leaflets are anything to go by, a similar problem is quite common in ecstacy users. They believe they are becoming dehydrated and panic (after reading the other NHS leaflet about becoming dehydrated when taking ecstacy), and drink a great deal of water for the rest of the night without taking in any sodium. The overhydration leads to swelling of the brain and coma. Of course, this is a government drugs health warning we're talking about, and I believe that the ecstacy itself has a role to play (rather than just the water).
+1: Irony
At any rate, I agree with the assessments of most here. While placing a worldwide information system under the (nominal) control of a single nation seems dubious, there aren't a whole lot of viable alternatives short of a squabbling committee, and at least the US knows what it's doing.
Slashdot Mirror
At last, someone picked up on it. ;) On the upside, I seem to have spurred some proper discussion, althoguh that may just be because I've got one of the earlier posts.
Define Beauty.
;)
Easy:
beauty
n
Kidding!
I certainly did. Most of all I felt entertained. Sure, I thought about various issues surrounding warfare, in particular how we use it in entertainment media, but I've done the same thing after picking through an encyclopedia or playing Advance Wars.
So by your definition, Saving Private Ryan isn't art, but an illustrated dictionary is?
Define "art".
Ah, curious. I guess the old "is freedom of speech fair when it can spread lies" dilemma's going to run and run.
Good point. I don't believe he made anyone aware of it, either, although there's a perfectly good system for that on the Wikipedia, so at the end of the day the only liable party is whoever made it up in the first place. Probably. (Hopefully?)
So he sat there and let people read it. If he was so bothered, why didn't he do something about it at the time? Like, you know, click the "Edit" button.
If you disagree with it, just edit it! No need to get all indignant.
The trick in those situations is to take the effort (and slight cost, depending on what your phone situation is) to phone them up and start quoting the Sale of Goods Act to them. If the member of staff you're with is giving you problems, immediately ask for their supervisor. If they still give you trouble, gather together a lot of other dissatisfied customers and all email Watchdog about it.
One can only hope that they're the sort of hosting company that charges their clients for exceeding their contract bandwidth.
I think you mean "undefined" period of time, rather than "unknown". Undefined as in "infinite".
This will still depend on the cable/sat companies wanting to provide this sort of service. Sky here in the UK only recently bowed to pressure to provide more flexible packages. Is there any suggestion that the US cable/sat companies are eager to provide the same?
With that in mind I'd say that both usages are valid, depending on whether you prefer to describe them as items or a sort of mass. I'm definitely in the "a lot of Lego attacked me" camp.
So, in order for the virtues of Firefox to be proclaimed to would-be switchers, they have to go to the website and download the commercial themselves? I doubt that's going to be particularly effective, as the limiting step is the same old word-of-mouth used to get people to look at the Firefox site in the first place.
Based on what has been suggested so far, I propose an "aliases list". Use absurdly commonplace strings to represent specific keyword-blocked artists/albums, and publish a lookup table. For example, "fish" could equate to "Kylie" and "the" could related to her most popular album at the time the lookup is published. Possible problem: all the false hits containing "The fish" when searching. Solution: search by file type and file size.
A little more hard work, but once again, a little thinking flattens the RIAA's spectacular uselessness. I think that they need a new body in charge of their anti-piracy initiative as they're clearly hopeless at it.
Gravity gun. We can only hope that Valve are drooling over the possibilities as much as the rest of us.
I said exactly the same things about the DS. All bets are off, gentlemen.
On one hand, it may not be much more useful than existing technology. On the other hand... microwaves! I don't know about the rest of you but when it comes to making my home absurdly futuristic, electric or gas heaters just don't cut it.
If I had mod points just now, you'd be recieving some. One of the most surprising things about the internet age is how it makes everything seem amazingly faulty. I think this is because of some expectation we have from the pre-internet days. Previously, when we'd hear about a half-dozen of an item going wrong, it'd be a half-dozen in our immediate neighbourhood, which would suggest a pretty big failure rate. Now we're still hearing about a half dozen going wrong, but that's a half-dozen in the whole internet, which represents a smaller failure rate.
I've seen a diagram of the entirety of known human biochemistry. Printed out you could merrily cover the outside of a house with those 5mm arrows and 10pt labels. Gazing upon that chart was like staring into the maw of some terrible Lovecraftian creature beyond comprehension. My point? If you want to be able to cope with organic chemistry, I reccomend you deal with it one reaction at a time, and not try to link the whole thing together. Learning the whole reaction space is a daunting prospect. Learning the tools of functional group interconversion and retrosynthetic analysis isn't.
Fact: The other browser is the safer one. *runs*
The RIAA saw fit to use ridiculously high fines to scare people away from downloading music; perhaps the ridiculously high fines here will scare music publishers away from DRM completely.
If NHS information leaflets are anything to go by, a similar problem is quite common in ecstacy users. They believe they are becoming dehydrated and panic (after reading the other NHS leaflet about becoming dehydrated when taking ecstacy), and drink a great deal of water for the rest of the night without taking in any sodium. The overhydration leads to swelling of the brain and coma. Of course, this is a government drugs health warning we're talking about, and I believe that the ecstacy itself has a role to play (rather than just the water).
+1: Irony At any rate, I agree with the assessments of most here. While placing a worldwide information system under the (nominal) control of a single nation seems dubious, there aren't a whole lot of viable alternatives short of a squabbling committee, and at least the US knows what it's doing.