A little research indicates a very incorrect logic to the investors:
> SCOX's revenues and earnings per share are up more than 30.5% and 100.0%, respectively, in the company's most recent published filing.
> SCOX racked up sales of $70.5 million over the past 12 months
Those numbers are enough to indicate very incorrect data to investors, who, unless they are on top of things, are going to assume there are REAL sales going on, instead of the extortion that is currently applying.
The whole legal system may be in need for an overhaul, but the core of the problem is voter apathy.
Think about it for a second. Where *is* the outrage? How is it that so much money leaves our pockets to be put into the government? Where is it all going? Between HS, Medicare/Medicaid, Welfare, Schools (which are more about indoctrination than education), and so forth... all in the name of "helping the (kids/seniors/minorities/so-forth)," and, oh yeah, let's not forget "Punishing those rich people."
And while I have issues against unethical wealth-building, not every wealthy person is morally bankrupt... you just hear about those. (Not to mention that I am trying to make my way to that point, myself... wealthy == more time to play w/my puter.:P)
Back to the point at hand... what is needed is for all those lazy bastards who feel they are entitled to everything they want to get off their asses and work for those things... and stop expecting the government to give those things to them.
Perhaps, but just about every investor truly worth his salt knows to invest in an industry that he is familiar with.
What I am pointing to is that fact thatinvestors are not as ignorant as you might think; a lot of investors no doubt have the same idea as Darl, and prepare the way to collect a lot of money on the "payday" just before the stock finally implodes... it's the same kind of thinking that will make a horse racer bet on a hundred-to-one shot... on the off chance that they'll pay off big.
It isn't a sign of ignorance... it's a sign that there's a major gamble coming up, with a massive payoff.
Seems reasonable... provides the uninitiated a 5-minute read into the situation... not everyone has the fortitude to wade through 30-40 pages of/. posts... even in high mod these days. (30-40 being the content of all posts in all the stories, not just one story.)
I can see where you're going with that argument, and to be quite honest, I don't put much faith in AI, either. The best example of what I think about it is based in an old Infocom game, "A Mind Forever Voyaging."
Artificial intelligence isn't truly artificial sentience until it has the capability of experiencing it's own existance. Living organisms that posess such self-awareness have thousands of input devices, known as nerve receptors, which alert them to the presence of anything to their immediate position. By this, one must learn to recognize the receptors' data. After a long time of learning the abilities of those receptors, and their cousins, the motor nerves (which activate muscle groups for the purpose of movement), self-awareness becomes available, because everywhere on the human body has such receptors, and what doesn't isn't really the human body.
With this knowledge, the person then begins to learn what is a pleasant experience to those receptors, and what is pain. With pleasure/pain, over time, the person begins to develop affections and apprehensions, which give way to full emotional response. Some additional functions in the body help this along, such as endorphins which improve the pleasure state in the brain, and thus, the body... further enhancing the personal experiences.
Now, a computer would have to have MASSIVE amounts of electric and processing power to activate and stimulate such receptors, should miniturization ever allow such devices to be manufactured cheaply and at such quantity to compare with the human's nervous system. And without that system, a computer cannot develop the deep, intricate levels of affection/apprehensions that would allow for emotional responses.
Add to this the fact that a computer would have to be able to process all of this in realtime, over approximately 12-18 years to truly mature into a true artificial sentience.
Now, what does this have to do with music?
Music is all about experience. People write what they know, and they sing how they feel. Experience is a byproduct of sentience, which most definitely means that computerized music, which can please and FOOL audiences, is yet a long time in coming.
I don't know about you guys, but personally, I don't think there's that big a risk of performers really being replaced. At least, not en toto.
Now, "popular music" notwithstanding, it takes more than just hitting the right notes and holding them to make music. This applies muchly to instruments, and doubly so for voices.
First of all, just any combination of notes are not what makes music... artists have to play with hundreds of variations of tones to find "that perfect sequence," the collection of tones in a specific order, length, and style that produce a pleasing arrangement. Once that has been found, further arrengments of music are patterned and fitted to that sequence. You can have a synthesizer, but someone's still programming it... and not with numbers, either.
Voices are many times more complex than musical instruments, because not only is there tone, volume, and length, but there is, for lack of a better term (in my own knowledge), shape of the sound. The artist Karl Jenkins (of "Adiemus" fame) used singers and a nonsensical language specifically to capitalize on that very set of qualities... using the human voice and speech as another "Instrument," rather than as lyrics.
Now, you could synth using the phonemes and vocal qualities of a singer, but ultimately, without the feeling behind the voice, no amount of coding will put any life to it.
Re:The Desktop Is Not Important Right Now
on
Linux in 2004?
·
· Score: 1
In marketing, the point is to sell your ideas to the people who we're trying to convince that this is better... and guess what, they're people who have their own problems, and can't spare time to deal with learning computers or the industry.
> Moral reasons -- for those who think all software must be Free, period
That would associate Free Software/Open Source with Communism... and the Soviet Union demonstrated how well that worked.
> Lower cost computers for everyone! (Also think schools and governments... lower taxes!)
A far more acceptable reason, and a selling point that could clinch the sale.
> You believe Microsoft has too much power over the computer industry. In this case, a competitor needs to attack it on all fronts.
Too many people are more worried about drugs, wars, and politics of a more immediate importance. Industry pundits would be interested, but the average consumer would not, as long as Microsoft's products solves their immediate problems.
> You prefer the UNIX way of doing things
That, unfortunately, is a fringe argument, only useful to those who are not indoctrinated into the Windows culture by virtue of MS's much better marketing and sales strategies.
> Competition would be possible between consumer-oriented distributors. Currently, Microsoft competes with no one. When Linux is common on the desktop, there should be fierce competition which will help everyone get a better system.
Repeat that after me... Microsoft competes with no one. What does this mean? It means that MS can guarantee that it's going to be there, since nobody's gonna put them out of business. To the person on the run, that means MS is a safe choice.
> No stupid e-mail viruses. Security is much easier in a proper UNIX environment.
Selling Point #2, and quite effective as of late. As a software salesman, I found that argument helps in the case of those people who want to browse the web/mail, or to provide public terminals... no fear of having to maintain them.
> Level playing field for application developers. No more will folks like WordPerfect have to compete with Microsoft, where Microsoft knows a lot more about the OS than WordPerfect does.
Potential selling point, or it could be an excuse for the customer to stay with MS... related to the "Safer" argument above.
> As more people use Linux on the desktop, those of us who have decided to use it no matter what will find more application software for sale and more hardware supported.
This is speculative. It could eventually be a selling point, but right now, it's patently false, where the consumer is concerned... after all, there's shelves all over full of MS software, maybe one whole shelf of Linux software.
***
Here's my own take on the situation: What does one need to do to install software on a Windows PC?
Insert the CD, and just follow the instructions that pop up.
This is the key to winning over the common consumer... they want handholding all the way, they want software to be available in a way they can hold it, insert it, and be told what to do (usually as easy as clicking "Next"), and finally, see it working once they've done it.
This is because they have more important things to do with their time than learn computers... and they're willing to pay MS for the benefit.
Most people buy computers to use their benefits, not the computers themselves.
The primary problem, as I can see it, is that pages begin on a base response, and will go back as far as necessary to display that base response, rather than the nested replies to it.
It can be annoying, so I will agree on that argument; at least include an option to do pages beginning in a response nest.
My own method of cutting down on nesting-thread page repetititition is to set the display to 100 posts/page. (Which also cuts down on my need to click on the page numbers! Nifty!)
Speech recognition with a whistling language would be much more accurate, since there's less of an issue with accent... text files could be compressed into a MIDI format... hard-of-hearing individuals would have a much easier time understanding what's being said.
There are also musical implications; is it possible that any existing works of music might have some meaning in such languages?
I have also known of research into the possibility that music accelerates a child's development... is it possible that combining spoken and whistled languages might introduce a new developmental factor?
You forget, the UNIX Trademark is owned by the Open Group, not SCO. SCO simply owns, as does Torvalds, and the University of California, an operating system that conforms to the UNIX standard, which is maintained and defined by the Open Group.
Just by creating an operating system that works like UNIX, does not imply that it is *System V Unix,* which is technically what SCO has.
Competing on technical merits? Where did that get the Amiga? Betamax?
Face it, technical merits might work within the realm of technitari as we all are, but in the mainstream, the people have one thought... "Will this do what I want it to do?"
And since they want to browse the web, write documents that they can send to others, and play games, they feel a lot safer with what is the most popular.
It's basic psychology, really... you use what you feel most comfortable with, and unless you know what you're doing, you do what you see everyone else doing.
These is the primary weapons of Microsoft Windows... "Easy to use," "Everybody's using it," and " Will always be there." People are drawn to those phrases like bees to honey, and unless MS goes completely bye-bye, they will be exceedingly reluctant to change from it.
Just remember one thing... a mind is a hard thing to change from outside; and 90% of them are going to use MS Windows.
Originally, the personal computer lacked raster graphics; when you wanted graphics, you needed to use the character set. There were two ways one could accomplish this.
The first would be to introduce a keyboard that possessed a secondary keyboard consisting of graphics characters.
The other, which was practiced, not only in the IBM PCs, but also in other 8-bit machines (Atari, Commodore, and Timex Sinclair come to mind), was to produce a separate key by which, combined with character keys, graphical symbols were produced. The designation on the IBM PC was the AltGr key... which eventually became the Alt key.
The graphics were fine, but what about non-visible referentials, such as color-changing, bells, and scroll lock? Well, on to the use of the control key, and eventually the escape key. The former was used to produce immediate functions through combinations of Ctrl and one of the other keys. The escape key furthered this later to provide more commands to the interpreter.
Then came Windows, with it's later revisions; Alt lost it's original purpose, and became the second Ctrl, and the Escape key no longer functioned as a command key; it's purpose became simply to escape out of running processes... particularly dialog boxes, where escape meant Cancel, while enter or space usually meant OK.
The Windows key was a development during the Windows 95 era, in which allowed the Start menu to pop up on a keypress; this happened, whether you were in a window, or a fullscreen process (which to this day remains my biggest pet peeve about that damned key) It also produced Windows-specific combos to activate some of the core Windows applications without the use of a mouse.
Since I'm drawing a lot from a somewhat holed memory (and my best estimates from what I've read so far), feel free to correct anything I've said thus far.
Personally, I think it would be much more feasable for the cable companies to just stop providing the internet service themselves, and rent the lines out to other ISPs... ISP pays cable companies, customer pays Cable company, customer has choice of provider, Broadband ISPs can expand their connectivity, therefore their profits... cable company is getting a good bit of profit themselves... everybody's happy.
Here's one little fact for you... Wal Mart, the retail chain, made it's beginnings in rural areas, not served by the typical supermarkets and/or department stores. While the other stores competed with one another, Wal Mart established their empire in niche areas.
Given a clever enough opportunist, the same can apply for internet services.
In the state of Ohio, there is a funky little thing known as the "Use Tax," where you pay tax, at tax time, for anything you've purchased out-of-state.
First of all, I'm pleased at this level of abstraction. A transparent form of encryption would be very useful for a company. Here are my thoughts on what has been brought up:
>> But you're still not secure between the client and the proxy as far as network transport is concerned
This is where good ol' fashioned employee screening, network policy, and admin reading of system logs come in. On a larger company network, there are people whose sole jobs are to make certain the network is secure... and being used for professional purposes. Will they miss things? Sure! But in a company network, the real risk is outside the LAN, because there is some security being used on the inside, from the "Stranger system" (employees know each other, and a stranger would stand out) to full-time security guards who screen people who enter the building.
Second, there is the level of SSL that would encrypt between the computer and the proxy, thereby preventing other forms of snooping, such as packet sniffing, from being successful.
And third, both levels would be immune to the worst form of security breach out there... ignorance. If a person downloads PGP, installs it, sees the lock icon in the task tray, and assumes that from then on, all his mail is secure, what's the chance of a real disaster happening? False security is worse than no security.
First of all, you NEED to have your wants met, as well as your basic survival needs. Why? Because what's the point of life if there's no enjoyment to it? It becomes a grind that births many a cynic and depressed soul... and kills thousands with suicide.
Second, it's not as hard as all that, as the point a massive majority of people miss is that money isn't real... not physically, anyhow. All the numbers in bank accounts, pieces of paper and metal, what does that bring?
Just proof of value. It's not value in and of itself, it's just the proof that you're worth what you believe you are.
Once upon a time, money didn't exist. People traded goods immediately in a system known as the barter system. However, suppose someone wanted what you had, but you didn't need it? Or better yet, how do you tell if what you have is worth what he has? Some kind of measurement had to be established.
Money is that measurement. The problem is that too many people have turned money from a measurement of value, into an object of value itself... foremost of those being people who are too lazy to even try and understand the nature of money.
Two things every person should know is how to use money. Money comes in many forms, not just the currency we're all familiar with. Accountants refer to them as Assets. Assets don't have to be cash; in fact, cash tends to be a liability, since inflation makes it lose its value over time. You literally lose money by burying it in the ground (or your mattress)
What are other assets?
Stock, especially those with dividends, are a prime example. Enough stock in a solid company could mean a cheery retirement... As long as you resist the urge to day-trade. Dividends are a sweet bonus; you're basically paid every three months for simply owning stock. Enough stock with dividends can literally pay for your lifestyle, without you having to do anything.
Real Estate is another form of money. Someone's gotta have a place to live, and they'll pay money to do so. Renting a property is quite lucrative, as long as you find a good property manager to deal with the blocked toilets and power blackouts. Retailing (fixing up and selling) can net you a very nice chunk of change in a single transaction.
Your own skills are a form of money. Think about it; your boss should be giving you a fair trade, you're giving him/her a valuable service in exchange for their cash. Seems like something that can be measured monitarily to me, don't you agree? And what's better is that you can increase the monetary value of this asset, simply by making a few trips to the library to improve what you have.
Finally, other people. Yes, get to know other people with strong skillbases, and before long, the combined skills of all of you will prove to be the biggest asset there is.
There is one more form of money, but it depends on the previous two... it's called "Opportunity." Once you or those you surround yourself with recognizes one, there will be no limit to the money you'll be making.
An asset in disguise is the personal corporation. Many a wealthy person uses such to buy all the stuff he/she uses, and he/she becomes the manager of the corporation's property. They're an employee of the corporation, and corporations (which are considered entities for taxation purposes) are taxed AFTER expenses, rather than before, like your typical income from any job. Essentially, the wealthy person owns nothing, and he works for the corporation who owns it all... he just manages its assets.
Credit cards are the worst liability there is out there... in that situation, you've become someone else's asset, rather than your own; you end up working to pay off a negative balance, and that tends to grow unless you pay far more than the minimum.
Riight... I don't know about you, but I've found that greed is actually the best cure for laziness out there... and laziness is what got our country into this mess...
After all, the largest number of voters out there are people too lazy to really pay attention to what's going on, and too apathetic to care.
And what in all the hells is wrong with wanting a better lifestyle? That's the whole point of "The Land of Opportunity" in the first place.
(Although under those tender Democrats, it's turned from the "Land of Opportunity" to the "Land of Entitlement." *shudder* And guess what kind of person prefers entitlement to opportunity? Yup, the lazy person.)
I hear all this debate about whether or not the code itself would md5 similarly, but here's one for y'all...
Tell me, would the file trees lend themselves to comparison? Or do we plan on catting every single file into a monolithic codeball to do the comparison on? Not counting the asm files, no doubt.
Would the System V file tree be identical to Linux's? Somehow, this I would doubt, extremely.
Slashdot Mirror
A little research indicates a very incorrect logic to the investors:
> SCOX's revenues and earnings per share are up more than 30.5% and 100.0%, respectively, in the company's most recent published filing.
> SCOX racked up sales of $70.5 million over the past 12 months
Those numbers are enough to indicate very incorrect data to investors, who, unless they are on top of things, are going to assume there are REAL sales going on, instead of the extortion that is currently applying.
You kidding? Those beady little eyes, the perpetual grin? They're out there, laughing at us, I tellya! They got no respect for the law!
The whole legal system may be in need for an overhaul, but the core of the problem is voter apathy.
:P)
Think about it for a second. Where *is* the outrage? How is it that so much money leaves our pockets to be put into the government? Where is it all going? Between HS, Medicare/Medicaid, Welfare, Schools (which are more about indoctrination than education), and so forth... all in the name of "helping the (kids/seniors/minorities/so-forth)," and, oh yeah, let's not forget "Punishing those rich people."
And while I have issues against unethical wealth-building, not every wealthy person is morally bankrupt... you just hear about those. (Not to mention that I am trying to make my way to that point, myself... wealthy == more time to play w/my puter.
Back to the point at hand... what is needed is for all those lazy bastards who feel they are entitled to everything they want to get off their asses and work for those things... and stop expecting the government to give those things to them.
Perhaps, but just about every investor truly worth his salt knows to invest in an industry that he is familiar with.
What I am pointing to is that fact thatinvestors are not as ignorant as you might think; a lot of investors no doubt have the same idea as Darl, and prepare the way to collect a lot of money on the "payday" just before the stock finally implodes... it's the same kind of thinking that will make a horse racer bet on a hundred-to-one shot... on the off chance that they'll pay off big.
It isn't a sign of ignorance... it's a sign that there's a major gamble coming up, with a massive payoff.
Seems reasonable... provides the uninitiated a 5-minute read into the situation... not everyone has the fortitude to wade through 30-40 pages of /. posts... even in high mod these days. (30-40 being the content of all posts in all the stories, not just one story.)
I can see where you're going with that argument, and to be quite honest, I don't put much faith in AI, either. The best example of what I think about it is based in an old Infocom game, "A Mind Forever Voyaging."
Artificial intelligence isn't truly artificial sentience until it has the capability of experiencing it's own existance. Living organisms that posess such self-awareness have thousands of input devices, known as nerve receptors, which alert them to the presence of anything to their immediate position. By this, one must learn to recognize the receptors' data. After a long time of learning the abilities of those receptors, and their cousins, the motor nerves (which activate muscle groups for the purpose of movement), self-awareness becomes available, because everywhere on the human body has such receptors, and what doesn't isn't really the human body.
With this knowledge, the person then begins to learn what is a pleasant experience to those receptors, and what is pain. With pleasure/pain, over time, the person begins to develop affections and apprehensions, which give way to full emotional response. Some additional functions in the body help this along, such as endorphins which improve the pleasure state in the brain, and thus, the body... further enhancing the personal experiences.
Now, a computer would have to have MASSIVE amounts of electric and processing power to activate and stimulate such receptors, should miniturization ever allow such devices to be manufactured cheaply and at such quantity to compare with the human's nervous system. And without that system, a computer cannot develop the deep, intricate levels of affection/apprehensions that would allow for emotional responses.
Add to this the fact that a computer would have to be able to process all of this in realtime, over approximately 12-18 years to truly mature into a true artificial sentience.
Now, what does this have to do with music?
Music is all about experience. People write what they know, and they sing how they feel. Experience is a byproduct of sentience, which most definitely means that computerized music, which can please and FOOL audiences, is yet a long time in coming.
I don't know about you guys, but personally, I don't think there's that big a risk of performers really being replaced. At least, not en toto.
Now, "popular music" notwithstanding, it takes more than just hitting the right notes and holding them to make music. This applies muchly to instruments, and doubly so for voices.
First of all, just any combination of notes are not what makes music... artists have to play with hundreds of variations of tones to find "that perfect sequence," the collection of tones in a specific order, length, and style that produce a pleasing arrangement. Once that has been found, further arrengments of music are patterned and fitted to that sequence. You can have a synthesizer, but someone's still programming it... and not with numbers, either.
Voices are many times more complex than musical instruments, because not only is there tone, volume, and length, but there is, for lack of a better term (in my own knowledge), shape of the sound. The artist Karl Jenkins (of "Adiemus" fame) used singers and a nonsensical language specifically to capitalize on that very set of qualities... using the human voice and speech as another "Instrument," rather than as lyrics.
Now, you could synth using the phonemes and vocal qualities of a singer, but ultimately, without the feeling behind the voice, no amount of coding will put any life to it.
In marketing, the point is to sell your ideas to the people who we're trying to convince that this is better... and guess what, they're people who have their own problems, and can't spare time to deal with learning computers or the industry.
... lower taxes!)
> Moral reasons -- for those who think all software must be Free, period
That would associate Free Software/Open Source with Communism... and the Soviet Union demonstrated how well that worked.
> Lower cost computers for everyone! (Also think schools and governments
A far more acceptable reason, and a selling point that could clinch the sale.
> You believe Microsoft has too much power over the computer industry. In this case, a competitor needs to attack it on all fronts.
Too many people are more worried about drugs, wars, and politics of a more immediate importance. Industry pundits would be interested, but the average consumer would not, as long as Microsoft's products solves their immediate problems.
> You prefer the UNIX way of doing things
That, unfortunately, is a fringe argument, only useful to those who are not indoctrinated into the Windows culture by virtue of MS's much better marketing and sales strategies.
> Competition would be possible between consumer-oriented distributors. Currently, Microsoft competes with no one. When Linux is common on the desktop, there should be fierce competition which will help everyone get a better system.
Repeat that after me... Microsoft competes with no one. What does this mean? It means that MS can guarantee that it's going to be there, since nobody's gonna put them out of business. To the person on the run, that means MS is a safe choice.
> No stupid e-mail viruses. Security is much easier in a proper UNIX environment.
Selling Point #2, and quite effective as of late. As a software salesman, I found that argument helps in the case of those people who want to browse the web/mail, or to provide public terminals... no fear of having to maintain them.
> Level playing field for application developers. No more will folks like WordPerfect have to compete with Microsoft, where Microsoft knows a lot more about the OS than WordPerfect does.
Potential selling point, or it could be an excuse for the customer to stay with MS... related to the "Safer" argument above.
> As more people use Linux on the desktop, those of us who have decided to use it no matter what will find more application software for sale and more hardware supported.
This is speculative. It could eventually be a selling point, but right now, it's patently false, where the consumer is concerned... after all, there's shelves all over full of MS software, maybe one whole shelf of Linux software.
***
Here's my own take on the situation: What does one need to do to install software on a Windows PC?
Insert the CD, and just follow the instructions that pop up.
This is the key to winning over the common consumer... they want handholding all the way, they want software to be available in a way they can hold it, insert it, and be told what to do (usually as easy as clicking "Next"), and finally, see it working once they've done it.
This is because they have more important things to do with their time than learn computers... and they're willing to pay MS for the benefit.
Most people buy computers to use their benefits, not the computers themselves.
The primary problem, as I can see it, is that pages begin on a base response, and will go back as far as necessary to display that base response, rather than the nested replies to it.
It can be annoying, so I will agree on that argument; at least include an option to do pages beginning in a response nest.
My own method of cutting down on nesting-thread page repetititition is to set the display to 100 posts/page. (Which also cuts down on my need to click on the page numbers! Nifty!)
I see we have a wonderful little threat going on here... needless to say, Darl's not just wanting to spear penguins, he's going devil-hunting next.
In other words... "All your UNIX are belong to us. You are on the way to destruction, make your time."
Imagine the applications of such a language!
Speech recognition with a whistling language would be much more accurate, since there's less of an issue with accent... text files could be compressed into a MIDI format... hard-of-hearing individuals would have a much easier time understanding what's being said.
There are also musical implications; is it possible that any existing works of music might have some meaning in such languages?
I have also known of research into the possibility that music accelerates a child's development... is it possible that combining spoken and whistled languages might introduce a new developmental factor?
Would this be considered Pigeon Pidgin?
You forget, the UNIX Trademark is owned by the Open Group, not SCO. SCO simply owns, as does Torvalds, and the University of California, an operating system that conforms to the UNIX standard, which is maintained and defined by the Open Group.
Just by creating an operating system that works like UNIX, does not imply that it is *System V Unix,* which is technically what SCO has.
So that argument is a failure waiting to happen.
Competing on technical merits? Where did that get the Amiga? Betamax?
Face it, technical merits might work within the realm of technitari as we all are, but in the mainstream, the people have one thought... "Will this do what I want it to do?"
And since they want to browse the web, write documents that they can send to others, and play games, they feel a lot safer with what is the most popular.
It's basic psychology, really... you use what you feel most comfortable with, and unless you know what you're doing, you do what you see everyone else doing.
These is the primary weapons of Microsoft Windows... "Easy to use," "Everybody's using it," and " Will always be there." People are drawn to those phrases like bees to honey, and unless MS goes completely bye-bye, they will be exceedingly reluctant to change from it.
Just remember one thing... a mind is a hard thing to change from outside; and 90% of them are going to use MS Windows.
I'm no expert, but here's my guess...
Originally, the personal computer lacked raster graphics; when you wanted graphics, you needed to use the character set. There were two ways one could accomplish this.
The first would be to introduce a keyboard that possessed a secondary keyboard consisting of graphics characters.
The other, which was practiced, not only in the IBM PCs, but also in other 8-bit machines (Atari, Commodore, and Timex Sinclair come to mind), was to produce a separate key by which, combined with character keys, graphical symbols were produced. The designation on the IBM PC was the AltGr key... which eventually became the Alt key.
The graphics were fine, but what about non-visible referentials, such as color-changing, bells, and scroll lock? Well, on to the use of the control key, and eventually the escape key. The former was used to produce immediate functions through combinations of Ctrl and one of the other keys. The escape key furthered this later to provide more commands to the interpreter.
Then came Windows, with it's later revisions; Alt lost it's original purpose, and became the second Ctrl, and the Escape key no longer functioned as a command key; it's purpose became simply to escape out of running processes... particularly dialog boxes, where escape meant Cancel, while enter or space usually meant OK.
The Windows key was a development during the Windows 95 era, in which allowed the Start menu to pop up on a keypress; this happened, whether you were in a window, or a fullscreen process (which to this day remains my biggest pet peeve about that damned key) It also produced Windows-specific combos to activate some of the core Windows applications without the use of a mouse.
Since I'm drawing a lot from a somewhat holed memory (and my best estimates from what I've read so far), feel free to correct anything I've said thus far.
Personally, I think it would be much more feasable for the cable companies to just stop providing the internet service themselves, and rent the lines out to other ISPs... ISP pays cable companies, customer pays Cable company, customer has choice of provider, Broadband ISPs can expand their connectivity, therefore their profits... cable company is getting a good bit of profit themselves... everybody's happy.
*shrug* My two cents.
9th Circus? The same clowns who tried to delay the California recall?
I wouldn't waste my money on taxation, even in the fight against spam... not when I can get my own spam assassin for free. ;)
http://saproxy.bloomba.com
Here's one little fact for you... Wal Mart, the retail chain, made it's beginnings in rural areas, not served by the typical supermarkets and/or department stores. While the other stores competed with one another, Wal Mart established their empire in niche areas.
Given a clever enough opportunist, the same can apply for internet services.
In the state of Ohio, there is a funky little thing known as the "Use Tax," where you pay tax, at tax time, for anything you've purchased out-of-state.
:)
Good thing I'm out of that state now!
*chuckle* You've got it bad? My first claim to computerdom consisted of an Atari 1200XL.
I'm a relic, and I'm not even 30 yet!
First of all, I'm pleased at this level of abstraction. A transparent form of encryption would be very useful for a company. Here are my thoughts on what has been brought up:
>> But you're still not secure between the client and the proxy as far as network transport is concerned
This is where good ol' fashioned employee screening, network policy, and admin reading of system logs come in. On a larger company network, there are people whose sole jobs are to make certain the network is secure... and being used for professional purposes. Will they miss things? Sure! But in a company network, the real risk is outside the LAN, because there is some security being used on the inside, from the "Stranger system" (employees know each other, and a stranger would stand out) to full-time security guards who screen people who enter the building.
Second, there is the level of SSL that would encrypt between the computer and the proxy, thereby preventing other forms of snooping, such as packet sniffing, from being successful.
And third, both levels would be immune to the worst form of security breach out there... ignorance. If a person downloads PGP, installs it, sees the lock icon in the task tray, and assumes that from then on, all his mail is secure, what's the chance of a real disaster happening? False security is worse than no security.
Here's where things get weird.
;)
First of all, you NEED to have your wants met, as well as your basic survival needs. Why? Because what's the point of life if there's no enjoyment to it? It becomes a grind that births many a cynic and depressed soul... and kills thousands with suicide.
Second, it's not as hard as all that, as the point a massive majority of people miss is that money isn't real... not physically, anyhow. All the numbers in bank accounts, pieces of paper and metal, what does that bring?
Just proof of value. It's not value in and of itself, it's just the proof that you're worth what you believe you are.
Once upon a time, money didn't exist. People traded goods immediately in a system known as the barter system. However, suppose someone wanted what you had, but you didn't need it? Or better yet, how do you tell if what you have is worth what he has? Some kind of measurement had to be established.
Money is that measurement. The problem is that too many people have turned money from a measurement of value, into an object of value itself... foremost of those being people who are too lazy to even try and understand the nature of money.
Two things every person should know is how to use money. Money comes in many forms, not just the currency we're all familiar with. Accountants refer to them as Assets. Assets don't have to be cash; in fact, cash tends to be a liability, since inflation makes it lose its value over time. You literally lose money by burying it in the ground (or your mattress)
What are other assets?
Stock, especially those with dividends, are a prime example. Enough stock in a solid company could mean a cheery retirement... As long as you resist the urge to day-trade. Dividends are a sweet bonus; you're basically paid every three months for simply owning stock. Enough stock with dividends can literally pay for your lifestyle, without you having to do anything.
Real Estate is another form of money. Someone's gotta have a place to live, and they'll pay money to do so. Renting a property is quite lucrative, as long as you find a good property manager to deal with the blocked toilets and power blackouts. Retailing (fixing up and selling) can net you a very nice chunk of change in a single transaction.
Your own skills are a form of money. Think about it; your boss should be giving you a fair trade, you're giving him/her a valuable service in exchange for their cash. Seems like something that can be measured monitarily to me, don't you agree? And what's better is that you can increase the monetary value of this asset, simply by making a few trips to the library to improve what you have.
Finally, other people. Yes, get to know other people with strong skillbases, and before long, the combined skills of all of you will prove to be the biggest asset there is.
There is one more form of money, but it depends on the previous two... it's called "Opportunity." Once you or those you surround yourself with recognizes one, there will be no limit to the money you'll be making.
An asset in disguise is the personal corporation. Many a wealthy person uses such to buy all the stuff he/she uses, and he/she becomes the manager of the corporation's property. They're an employee of the corporation, and corporations (which are considered entities for taxation purposes) are taxed AFTER expenses, rather than before, like your typical income from any job. Essentially, the wealthy person owns nothing, and he works for the corporation who owns it all... he just manages its assets.
Credit cards are the worst liability there is out there... in that situation, you've become someone else's asset, rather than your own; you end up working to pay off a negative balance, and that tends to grow unless you pay far more than the minimum.
*shrug* My $.02, I hope it bought something.
Riight... I don't know about you, but I've found that greed is actually the best cure for laziness out there... and laziness is what got our country into this mess...
After all, the largest number of voters out there are people too lazy to really pay attention to what's going on, and too apathetic to care.
And what in all the hells is wrong with wanting a better lifestyle? That's the whole point of "The Land of Opportunity" in the first place.
(Although under those tender Democrats, it's turned from the "Land of Opportunity" to the "Land of Entitlement." *shudder* And guess what kind of person prefers entitlement to opportunity? Yup, the lazy person.)
I hear all this debate about whether or not the code itself would md5 similarly, but here's one for y'all...
Tell me, would the file trees lend themselves to comparison? Or do we plan on catting every single file into a monolithic codeball to do the comparison on? Not counting the asm files, no doubt.
Would the System V file tree be identical to Linux's? Somehow, this I would doubt, extremely.