Their "best buddies" are the patent trolls, plus the others with a vested interest in the scam, dishing out campaign contributions. Constituents? In the business, those are known as the "marks".
No, but I wish I had the mod points to spend for you.
Antique (now), but unmatched (then) by all but heavy-duty commercial work station's, graphics and sound, plus some really well-designed games, give me a benchmark against which nearly everything today falls short.
I need it run well natively on Linux, since the MS "we can access your hard drive at will" license, plus the "contact MS to get permission to change much of your system", is unacceptable to me, and while Mac OSX is a kind-of nice update to AmigaDOS, I don't have any desire to support the Mac culture.
If there's a multiplayer mode, like Star Craft/Brood War, Civilization/Alpha Centauri/..., then I need pure LAN play, not "connect to our server", like the new Star Craft 2.
I prefer RTS. How 'bout a decent AI, instead of cheats.
Perhaps a good single- or multi-player flight sim. Used to be an awesome one on SunOS. Beautifully rendered aircraft and Defense Logistics Agency terrain maps. Full LAN play (had to wonder if the guy you just smoked was your boss). Something like that, with joystick control would be a pleasure to play. Even something like the Amiga "Strike Aces" (Accolade) would be nice, too, 'specially with LAN play for "full package" missions.
Again from the Amiga days, "688 Attack Sub". Now that computers can match, and surpass, the Amiga's graphics and sound, that one would be much more immersive.
A modern graphics version of "Arctic Fox" (another Amiga classic; anyone know where the Forth source code went?), which had an outstanding balance of tactical and strategic objectives, plus some really well thought-out effects (lose a track and you can go in circles, with your tank tilted down on the missing-track side, changing track sounds depending on terrain,...).
Games used to be fun. Now they (at least the MUSHs) are way to much like work; should probably be a term like the "workification" of games.
Unless it is scaled by vehicle weight, it is absurdly (not that that bothers gov't types) out of balance with the maintenance demands generated by the vehicle. Even my largest motorcycle (650 lbs) does much less damage to the road than any SUV (even the lightest Kia, or whatever), and we both do less than a 5-ton, and up, truck.
VMT still has to be read from the vehicle. There has to be a place set up for each vehicle to have its meter read while the meter can be verified to be attached to the assigned vehicle. Setting up this infrastructure may be easier in states with regular vehicle inspections and smog checks, but even California doesn't "smog" every vehicle every year, so it will still cost money to expand, if not create the verification infrastructure.
Validation is also going to require a rather intrusive log or it will be very easy to defeat these things ("didn't drive much; car sat in a shed that seems to block GPS/cell/... signals" or "didn't drive much; the car battery died and I didn't get around to replacing it"). We know that once the log is there, it will be used for more than the VMT tax.
You want to recover the "road use" tax for electrics? Shift more to the excise tax on tires, rather than fuel, since tire wear has some correlation to road use. At least until the battery packs last infinitely long, put an excise tax on those (adjusted for technology). Neither of these requires the infrastructure costs or intrusive technology of a VMT tax.
Are you people too busy transferring scientific data, supply orders for the coming winter, and personal messages to SOs thousands of miles away to burn your precious link bandwidth getting the latest, coolest, most Mozilla-ish browser available?
IANAL, but that's not true in the USofA (Australia, too, IIRC). Although the facts themselves are not copyrightable, specific aggregates of those facts are.
A 'phone book's copyright is held by the "person" publishing the book. In Australia, the case involved aggregation of TV schedules (the schedule entries were "facts", but the aggregated schedule was a "work"). Various data aggregations are sold by businesses, and a few government agencies, and those aggregations have copyrights.
Although my wife's Jaguar has a touchscreen, it is surrounded by controls for the most commonly used features (knob for audio volume, buttons for source select and program advance/rewind, touch-identifiable for temp/fan/defrost climate controls). Only infrequently used controls and the nav system need the touchscreen, and the nav system is never used (despite buying a map update) except by out-of-town visitors, and they get voice directions once I program the destination in the driveway. The most-used control on the touchscreen is the one that sets the display to the Jaguar logo, since it defaults to the main menu unless you had one of the other subsystems up when the car was shut down.
The electro-stoners that are busy running through the menus on their no-knob stereos and touch screen systems are as bad as any substance abusers. Confiscate their wheels and put their cars on blocks, so they can play in their living rooms without menacing the rest of us.
I'm one of those people who perspires walking in a blizzard.
I would pay quite a bit more for a working anti-fog coating than anything that is currently on the market, since they don't work very well for me. I need my snowboard-riding goggles, my motorcycle face shields (and, yes, I have ridden with snow all around; just don't ride on ice) , and ALL of my sunglasses coated.
Microsoft Windows products have been known to scan media streams for executables, either deliberately (for installing gov't keyloggers, for example) or accidentally:
While there are similarities (helplessness, humiliation,...) between an electronic attack like identity theft and assault by an invading army, most of us are already assaulted in that way by the sanctioned Ponzi schemes called the stock/commodities markets.
No woman has ever had her body literally ripped into by an electronic "invader".
"imaginative testimony" by the police is a staple of British comedy. How do we know that this is not more of the same? Further, to be of any real value, the camera would have to solve enough ADDITIONAL crimes, over and above what would have been solved by "regular" police work to repay, at least, all of the expense of installing and maintaining them in reduced cost of police and/or other losses, and the report just doesn't even hint at that.
Most of the geographical western United States is outside of cell phone coverage.
Ranchers, farmers, and highway construction/maintenance workers could all use a reliable means of communication when not "in the big city". If there's ever a service that will live long enough and that has a combined sat/cell pay-as-you-go plan, I'll be in it.
BTW, it's nonsense that satellite coverage costs too much to set up, relative to cell phones. It's just that they don't have the overpriced monopoly land-line business to subsidize the initial cost of the wireless infrastructure as AT&T and Verizon did.
Since I will NEVER buy a game that doesn't have both a good single user mode and LAN (totally isolated from any exterior network) or co-op play, where those make some kind of sense, I have a lot more time to work and make money, spend the money and much of the remaining time with my family, and ride my motorcycle (day trips and longer), burning the rest of the time and money.
Blizzard saved me a lot of time and money with SC2, and, now, EA is telling me that I never have to even consider their games, saving me even more time.
If the employers already allowed flex time, there would be a more even distribution of commuters over several hours, and the problem would smaller to non-existent.
If the employers don't allow flex time (as apparently they don't, as least in useful numbers), it won't matter what information is available to commuters, they'll still have to be arriving at work during peak commuter density periods, and leaving at the corresponding end-of-work-day.
Really want to fix the problem? Maybe you could have an auction every year for employers to buy their preferred work start hours. For 1000 employees, it might encourage them to save a few bucks by buying "off" hours.
Seems to be that a very high proportion of the "ugly bags of water" (ST:TNG) infesting the surface must have come from "outer space", in the colloquial sense.
Not the content, at least for now, but there's money to be made selling the contact list, and not just to the gov't.
If you're regularly calling the local pharmacy, for example, don't the health insurance scammers have "a right to know that" (for a fee, of course) so they can stuff your mailbox (and email box, if you're lame enough to use your phone company as an ISP) with advertising?
In related but less agreeable news, "Dennis Durkin, who is both COO and CFO for Microsoft's Xbox group, told investors this week that Kinect can also be used by advertisers to see how many people are in a room when an ad is on screen, and to custom-tailor content based on the people it recognizes."
Is there any way to remove the mod capabilities from the morons that modded me down?
Slashdot Mirror
Their "best buddies" are the patent trolls, plus the others with a vested interest in the scam, dishing out campaign contributions. Constituents? In the business, those are known as the "marks".
No, but I wish I had the mod points to spend for you.
Antique (now), but unmatched (then) by all but heavy-duty commercial work station's, graphics and sound, plus some really well-designed games, give me a benchmark against which nearly everything today falls short.
OK:
I need it run well natively on Linux, since the MS "we can access your hard drive at will" license, plus the "contact MS to get permission to change much of your system", is unacceptable to me, and while Mac OSX is a kind-of nice update to AmigaDOS, I don't have any desire to support the Mac culture.
If there's a multiplayer mode, like Star Craft/Brood War, Civilization/Alpha Centauri/..., then I need pure LAN play, not "connect to our server", like the new Star Craft 2.
I prefer RTS. How 'bout a decent AI, instead of cheats.
Perhaps a good single- or multi-player flight sim. Used to be an awesome one on SunOS. Beautifully rendered aircraft and Defense Logistics Agency terrain maps. Full LAN play (had to wonder if the guy you just smoked was your boss). Something like that, with joystick control would be a pleasure to play. Even something like the Amiga "Strike Aces" (Accolade) would be nice, too, 'specially with LAN play for "full package" missions.
Again from the Amiga days, "688 Attack Sub". Now that computers can match, and surpass, the Amiga's graphics and sound, that one would be much more immersive.
A modern graphics version of "Arctic Fox" (another Amiga classic; anyone know where the Forth source code went?), which had an outstanding balance of tactical and strategic objectives, plus some really well thought-out effects (lose a track and you can go in circles, with your tank tilted down on the missing-track side, changing track sounds depending on terrain, ...).
Games used to be fun. Now they (at least the MUSHs) are way to much like work; should probably be a term like the "workification" of games.
How would Slashdotters go about picking a solid, basic laptop for Web surfing and document editing that won't be obsolete in two years?
If you can buy it, it is already obsolete and overpriced.
But, since you already have an X86 Mac, just use Parallels, "boot Campt" to dual boot, or simply install XP.
Unless it is scaled by vehicle weight, it is absurdly (not that that bothers gov't types) out of balance with the maintenance demands generated by the vehicle. Even my largest motorcycle (650 lbs) does much less damage to the road than any SUV (even the lightest Kia, or whatever), and we both do less than a 5-ton, and up, truck.
VMT still has to be read from the vehicle. There has to be a place set up for each vehicle to have its meter read while the meter can be verified to be attached to the assigned vehicle. Setting up this infrastructure may be easier in states with regular vehicle inspections and smog checks, but even California doesn't "smog" every vehicle every year, so it will still cost money to expand, if not create the verification infrastructure.
Validation is also going to require a rather intrusive log or it will be very easy to defeat these things ("didn't drive much; car sat in a shed that seems to block GPS/cell/... signals" or "didn't drive much; the car battery died and I didn't get around to replacing it"). We know that once the log is there, it will be used for more than the VMT tax.
You want to recover the "road use" tax for electrics? Shift more to the excise tax on tires, rather than fuel, since tire wear has some correlation to road use. At least until the battery packs last infinitely long, put an excise tax on those (adjusted for technology). Neither of these requires the infrastructure costs or intrusive technology of a VMT tax.
Not while I was watching, anyway.
Are you people too busy transferring scientific data, supply orders for the coming winter, and personal messages to SOs thousands of miles away to burn your precious link bandwidth getting the latest, coolest, most Mozilla-ish browser available?
IANAL, but that's not true in the USofA (Australia, too, IIRC). Although the facts themselves are not copyrightable, specific aggregates of those facts are.
A 'phone book's copyright is held by the "person" publishing the book. In Australia, the case involved aggregation of TV schedules (the schedule entries were "facts", but the aggregated schedule was a "work"). Various data aggregations are sold by businesses, and a few government agencies, and those aggregations have copyrights.
Tell me about it. (oh, you did).
I very often ride with the smallest face shield opening the helmet will latch. Still get fogging on the sunglasses underneath, though.
Although my wife's Jaguar has a touchscreen, it is surrounded by controls for the most commonly used features (knob for audio volume, buttons for source select and program advance/rewind, touch-identifiable for temp/fan/defrost climate controls). Only infrequently used controls and the nav system need the touchscreen, and the nav system is never used (despite buying a map update) except by out-of-town visitors, and they get voice directions once I program the destination in the driveway. The most-used control on the touchscreen is the one that sets the display to the Jaguar logo, since it defaults to the main menu unless you had one of the other subsystems up when the car was shut down.
The electro-stoners that are busy running through the menus on their no-knob stereos and touch screen systems are as bad as any substance abusers. Confiscate their wheels and put their cars on blocks, so they can play in their living rooms without menacing the rest of us.
PLEASE!!!
I'm one of those people who perspires walking in a blizzard.
I would pay quite a bit more for a working anti-fog coating than anything that is currently on the market, since they don't work very well for me. I need my snowboard-riding goggles, my motorcycle face shields (and, yes, I have ridden with snow all around; just don't ride on ice) , and ALL of my sunglasses coated.
Microsoft Windows products have been known to scan media streams for executables, either deliberately (for installing gov't keyloggers, for example) or accidentally:
http://www.iss.net/security_center/reference/vuln/RIFF_Codec_Overflow.htm
http://wcatwc.arh.noaa.gov/2011/03/11/lhvpdd/03/messagelhvpd9-03.htm
Will the pictures of your half-dressed kids and nude SO uploaded to Microsoft be higher resolution than the current XBox360/Kinect uploads?
http://chriselbert.com/2011/01/04/microsoft-kinect-are-ps3-move-are-watching-you/
http://www.thecortex.info/2010/11/via-newsfactor-microsoft-vice-president.html
etc.
Not even close.
While there are similarities (helplessness, humiliation, ...) between an electronic attack like identity theft and assault by an invading army, most of us are already assaulted in that way by the sanctioned Ponzi schemes called the stock/commodities markets.
No woman has ever had her body literally ripped into by an electronic "invader".
You're linking the facebook and twitter tracking icons, asshats.
Panel three?!?!
http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20101220/
They get paid to assign patent numbers.
How many bureaucrats would be out of work if the office was reduced to a reasonable level, for example, a single clerk with a "DENIED" stamp?
"imaginative testimony" by the police is a staple of British comedy. How do we know that this is not more of the same? Further, to be of any real value, the camera would have to solve enough ADDITIONAL crimes, over and above what would have been solved by "regular" police work to repay, at least, all of the expense of installing and maintaining them in reduced cost of police and/or other losses, and the report just doesn't even hint at that.
Most of the geographical western United States is outside of cell phone coverage.
Ranchers, farmers, and highway construction/maintenance workers could all use a reliable means of communication when not "in the big city". If there's ever a service that will live long enough and that has a combined sat/cell pay-as-you-go plan, I'll be in it.
BTW, it's nonsense that satellite coverage costs too much to set up, relative to cell phones. It's just that they don't have the overpriced monopoly land-line business to subsidize the initial cost of the wireless infrastructure as AT&T and Verizon did.
Since I will NEVER buy a game that doesn't have both a good single user mode and LAN (totally isolated from any exterior network) or co-op play, where those make some kind of sense, I have a lot more time to work and make money, spend the money and much of the remaining time with my family, and ride my motorcycle (day trips and longer), burning the rest of the time and money.
Blizzard saved me a lot of time and money with SC2, and, now, EA is telling me that I never have to even consider their games, saving me even more time.
If the employers already allowed flex time, there would be a more even distribution of commuters over several hours, and the problem would smaller to non-existent.
If the employers don't allow flex time (as apparently they don't, as least in useful numbers), it won't matter what information is available to commuters, they'll still have to be arriving at work during peak commuter density periods, and leaving at the corresponding end-of-work-day.
Really want to fix the problem? Maybe you could have an auction every year for employers to buy their preferred work start hours. For 1000 employees, it might encourage them to save a few bucks by buying "off" hours.
Seems to be that a very high proportion of the "ugly bags of water" (ST:TNG) infesting the surface must have come from "outer space", in the colloquial sense.
Don't they?
Not the content, at least for now, but there's money to be made selling the contact list, and not just to the gov't.
If you're regularly calling the local pharmacy, for example, don't the health insurance scammers have "a right to know that" (for a fee, of course) so they can stuff your mailbox (and email box, if you're lame enough to use your phone company as an ISP) with advertising?
I think you may have missed the "Buffy" reference.
Too young, too old, or just not in the viewing area?
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1855134&cid=34133246
And now there's an actual admission?
Is there any way to remove the mod capabilities from the morons that modded me down?