I find the same to be true about parcel delivery in the United States. Although I'm sure delivered goods -do- get stolen off of doorsteps all the time.. it appears to be relatively safe enough that people do have things delivered to their doorstep and just dropped off there left in clear view until they get home.. and most of the time apparently not have them stolen.
That totally depends on the area. I live in a moderate sized US city, not really even a bad area, and I've had tons of packages stolen off the front porch. I finally had to just rent a mailbox to ship packages to.
In the suburbs, you can get away with it because the houses tend to be back from the road and there's not a whole lot of foot traffic. It's often not easy to even see a package from a passing car, and you'd be conspicuous as hell stopping and running across the front yard to grab it. In a denser neighborhood like mine, the houses are five steps from the street and there is lots of foot traffic. It's a piece of cake to step up, grab a package, and disappear before anyone notices.
Copyright law exists for the advancement of society, not for the arbitrary whims of creators. His desires are moot compared to the overall effect on society.
Correct, and the way copyright law advances society is by giving creators the exclusive right to exploit their work for a limited period of time, thereby creating incentive for creators to produce said work. So his desires are in fact the whole point.
I don't get it, what grounds would Adobe have to sue Apple? Last I heard, there were no laws against having a closed platform. Even some sort of antitrust angle doesn't make sense. The iPhone is huge, but it's hardly the only smartphone on the market.
I was starting to wonder if I was the only one. I use Windows full time, though, for web, e-mail, games, everything. My rules are: 1.) Don't use IE, 2.) Keep everything up to date, 3.) Always use a hardware router/firewall. 4.) Don't execute anything unless you know what it is and where it came from.
Every once in a while, I'll use Trend Micro's web-based scanner, and do a quick scan with Spybot and/or AdAware. They've never come up with anything more serious than tracking cookies. The one time I had a serious problem, I had launched IE (breaking rule #1) to look at a page that wouldn't render in Firefox and mis-clicked on a popup, hitting "OK" by mistake. I knew I had been infected immediately, and spent about 4 hours ripping the bastard out. I really can't understand how people who know what they are doing (or at least should) get hit with random viruses that "just install themselves."
If you want to do something about the spamming problem, start looking beyond your own nose. Stop adjusting your filtering rules constantly. Pay attention to the cause of the problem - spam is an economic problem. Until something is done about the profit-motive (and the insane margins of profit) behind spam, the problem will only continue to grow.
Two problems with this idea. First, the people who actually buy stuff from spam can be difficult to identify. I think many of them know deep down that they are doing something exquisitely stupid and will deny it if asked. Second, even if we can identify these spam patrons, it is quite illegal in most places to bash their empty skulls in with a baseball bat. Barring some significant changes in legislation, I just don't see how the problem can be tackled from this end.
(I actually just gave 4chan as an example to point out an overall direction -- there are far worse places, where hatred and malice are directed to whichever cause you can think up)
I have to say, I missed the part about shutdowns starting in March, too. It seems kind of pointless, since a machine that shuts down every two hours is essentially useless. Might as well pull the plug in March and call it done.
They didn't even bother to SELL their 3rd most profitable brand, they just terminated it.
In their defense, there really wasn't much to sell of Pontiac other than the arrowhead and some trade dress. Basically all of the technology in modern Pontiacs came from other divisions. And unlike some of the divisions they decided to sell, *if* they found a buyer for Pontiac, all they'd be doing is creating a competitor on their home turf competing in their core market.
I remember editing some documents for a woman who apparently learned this way. The problem is it looks OK in fonts like Courier and Times New Roman, but if you change the font they can stick out like a sore thumb.
"Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc...and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons."
Exactly. Nothing irritates me more than to have the manager who agreed to the ridiculous, unreasonable schedule that forced us to work late going, "OK, see you guys. IM me if you need anything," and then going home to have dinner with his family. Fuck that, you're at least party responsible, you should stay and suffer with us, even if all you're doing is ordering pizza and answering questions. I think if more managers had to work 16 hour days they'd push a little harder to work out reasonable schedules.
When I read this, I thought, "wha?". With the patriot act and the way the police execute their power, I thought that the constitution was used to wipe the asses of the corporations a long time ago, but when I consulted the good book of a 1000 truths it seems that the US haven't banned any video games at all. Compared to other nations, like Australia, which ban video games as if their going for some kind of Guinness record.
It's kind of amazing, I know. The Bill of Rights has proven incredibly resilient so far, having resisted most attempts to convert it into toilet paper.
Just turn it around. Try to even think about the uproar if some game developer released a game where Americans are associated with terrorism and the famous "No Russian" level would take part in lets say New York Airport, instead of Moscow.
Uproar *from the people* is fine. The problem here is that, as I understand it, the ban is coming from the Russian government. There is no way the US government could get a game banned over content that portrayed Americans negatively. Any attempt would rightly be overturned as unconstitutional.
I believe that's correct. I find it's kind of a mixed blessing. One one hand you get the lying bullshit artist who will say anything to make a sale. On the other hand, you tend to get better service from someone working on commission.
A while back, I needed to buy an AC on the first really hot weekend of the summer. We went to Best Buy, and there was one unit left on a high shelf, with an angry crowd milling about beneath it. At least two employees were standing safely out of the way, just watching the proceedings. We walked out and went over to Sears, where the salesperson practically met us at the door. It probably took about 15 minutes to get the AC we wanted, including the time it took to load it in the car.
"Swine virus 100 times lethal than seasonal flu". Of course, it could still be statistical noise. But it seems trends are starting to emerge - there are targets who are not at risk from seasonal flu, but are more vulnerable to swine flu: namely pregnant people, obese people, and teenagers.
Thank god it's virtually impossible to be a member of all three groups at the same time.
Great, next thing you know they'll want us to shower, too.
Re:As juvenile and deplorable as the whole thing i
on
The Outing of Pranknet
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· Score: 1
The problem is that most of the pranks involve convincing people there is imminent danger. Given even 30 seconds to think about it, all but the dumbest people would realize what they are being asked to do is stupid. Having to make a split second decision in what they believe is a life and death situation, and in the absence of any other information, a lot of people will tend to just do what they are told, regardless of how outrageous it sounds.
Maybe the gas thing is just to avoid hauling around bits of loose change?
I used to do it even though I've always bought gas on a credit card. I quit doing that lately, though. My new obsession is getting in those last few squirts of gas so the needle goes all the way up and rests against the stop. It's trickier than you'd think, because every pump seems to cut off at a slightly different point.
I think the idea is that you can simply orbit the planet in the same vehicle used to get there. A lander means you have to carry a separate vehicle which can land safely *and* can climb back out of the gravity well again, with all of the weight, complexity, and cost associated with that. Just orbiting and sending down some throwaway robot probes means the mission is less complex and cheaper by orders of magnitude, meaning it can be done in a much shorter timeframe.
I'm embarrassed to say that I've experienced this. I was horrified to learn that they were installing a cell tower on top of an apartment building I was living in at the time. The day it was supposed to go online, I could "feel" it; I started getting dizzy and nauseous going up in the elevator. A few weeks later, I learned that there was a delay and they hadn't even powered the thing up until a week later. Fortunately, finding this out "cured" me of what was essentially a phobia and I haven't had a problem since.
Yeah, there are definitely parts of Neuromancer that are hilariously dated. The one that always sticks out for me is the part where Case has 3MB of stolen RAM that he's trying to move. It sounded impressively futuristic in 1985. Today, not so much.
Slashdot Mirror
I find the same to be true about parcel delivery in the United States. Although I'm sure delivered goods -do- get stolen off of doorsteps all the time.. it appears to be relatively safe enough that people do have things delivered to their doorstep and just dropped off there left in clear view until they get home.. and most of the time apparently not have them stolen.
That totally depends on the area. I live in a moderate sized US city, not really even a bad area, and I've had tons of packages stolen off the front porch. I finally had to just rent a mailbox to ship packages to.
In the suburbs, you can get away with it because the houses tend to be back from the road and there's not a whole lot of foot traffic. It's often not easy to even see a package from a passing car, and you'd be conspicuous as hell stopping and running across the front yard to grab it. In a denser neighborhood like mine, the houses are five steps from the street and there is lots of foot traffic. It's a piece of cake to step up, grab a package, and disappear before anyone notices.
Copyright law exists for the advancement of society, not for the arbitrary whims of creators. His desires are moot compared to the overall effect on society.
Correct, and the way copyright law advances society is by giving creators the exclusive right to exploit their work for a limited period of time, thereby creating incentive for creators to produce said work. So his desires are in fact the whole point.
Holy crap, I missed the 2007 update to this story. The dude's turned into the Trashcan Man. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,299362,00.html
I don't get it, what grounds would Adobe have to sue Apple? Last I heard, there were no laws against having a closed platform. Even some sort of antitrust angle doesn't make sense. The iPhone is huge, but it's hardly the only smartphone on the market.
I was starting to wonder if I was the only one. I use Windows full time, though, for web, e-mail, games, everything. My rules are: 1.) Don't use IE, 2.) Keep everything up to date, 3.) Always use a hardware router/firewall. 4.) Don't execute anything unless you know what it is and where it came from.
Every once in a while, I'll use Trend Micro's web-based scanner, and do a quick scan with Spybot and/or AdAware. They've never come up with anything more serious than tracking cookies. The one time I had a serious problem, I had launched IE (breaking rule #1) to look at a page that wouldn't render in Firefox and mis-clicked on a popup, hitting "OK" by mistake. I knew I had been infected immediately, and spent about 4 hours ripping the bastard out. I really can't understand how people who know what they are doing (or at least should) get hit with random viruses that "just install themselves."
If you want to do something about the spamming problem, start looking beyond your own nose. Stop adjusting your filtering rules constantly. Pay attention to the cause of the problem - spam is an economic problem. Until something is done about the profit-motive (and the insane margins of profit) behind spam, the problem will only continue to grow.
Two problems with this idea. First, the people who actually buy stuff from spam can be difficult to identify. I think many of them know deep down that they are doing something exquisitely stupid and will deny it if asked. Second, even if we can identify these spam patrons, it is quite illegal in most places to bash their empty skulls in with a baseball bat. Barring some significant changes in legislation, I just don't see how the problem can be tackled from this end.
(I actually just gave 4chan as an example to point out an overall direction -- there are far worse places, where hatred and malice are directed to whichever cause you can think up)
Like the YouTube comments section... *shudder*
I have to say, I missed the part about shutdowns starting in March, too. It seems kind of pointless, since a machine that shuts down every two hours is essentially useless. Might as well pull the plug in March and call it done.
They didn't even bother to SELL their 3rd most profitable brand, they just terminated it.
In their defense, there really wasn't much to sell of Pontiac other than the arrowhead and some trade dress. Basically all of the technology in modern Pontiacs came from other divisions. And unlike some of the divisions they decided to sell, *if* they found a buyer for Pontiac, all they'd be doing is creating a competitor on their home turf competing in their core market.
I remember editing some documents for a woman who apparently learned this way. The problem is it looks OK in fonts like Courier and Times New Roman, but if you change the font they can stick out like a sore thumb.
"Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc...and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons."
-Douglas Adams
Exactly. Nothing irritates me more than to have the manager who agreed to the ridiculous, unreasonable schedule that forced us to work late going, "OK, see you guys. IM me if you need anything," and then going home to have dinner with his family. Fuck that, you're at least party responsible, you should stay and suffer with us, even if all you're doing is ordering pizza and answering questions. I think if more managers had to work 16 hour days they'd push a little harder to work out reasonable schedules.
When I read this, I thought, "wha?". With the patriot act and the way the police execute their power, I thought that the constitution was used to wipe the asses of the corporations a long time ago, but when I consulted the good book of a 1000 truths it seems that the US haven't banned any video games at all. Compared to other nations, like Australia, which ban video games as if their going for some kind of Guinness record.
It's kind of amazing, I know. The Bill of Rights has proven incredibly resilient so far, having resisted most attempts to convert it into toilet paper.
Just turn it around. Try to even think about the uproar if some game developer released a game where Americans are associated with terrorism and the famous "No Russian" level would take part in lets say New York Airport, instead of Moscow.
Uproar *from the people* is fine. The problem here is that, as I understand it, the ban is coming from the Russian government. There is no way the US government could get a game banned over content that portrayed Americans negatively. Any attempt would rightly be overturned as unconstitutional.
I believe that's correct. I find it's kind of a mixed blessing. One one hand you get the lying bullshit artist who will say anything to make a sale. On the other hand, you tend to get better service from someone working on commission.
A while back, I needed to buy an AC on the first really hot weekend of the summer. We went to Best Buy, and there was one unit left on a high shelf, with an angry crowd milling about beneath it. At least two employees were standing safely out of the way, just watching the proceedings. We walked out and went over to Sears, where the salesperson practically met us at the door. It probably took about 15 minutes to get the AC we wanted, including the time it took to load it in the car.
"Swine virus 100 times lethal than seasonal flu". Of course, it could still be statistical noise. But it seems trends are starting to emerge - there are targets who are not at risk from seasonal flu, but are more vulnerable to swine flu: namely pregnant people, obese people, and teenagers.
Thank god it's virtually impossible to be a member of all three groups at the same time.
Great, next thing you know they'll want us to shower, too.
The problem is that most of the pranks involve convincing people there is imminent danger. Given even 30 seconds to think about it, all but the dumbest people would realize what they are being asked to do is stupid. Having to make a split second decision in what they believe is a life and death situation, and in the absence of any other information, a lot of people will tend to just do what they are told, regardless of how outrageous it sounds.
Maybe the gas thing is just to avoid hauling around bits of loose change?
I used to do it even though I've always bought gas on a credit card. I quit doing that lately, though. My new obsession is getting in those last few squirts of gas so the needle goes all the way up and rests against the stop. It's trickier than you'd think, because every pump seems to cut off at a slightly different point.
I think the idea is that you can simply orbit the planet in the same vehicle used to get there. A lander means you have to carry a separate vehicle which can land safely *and* can climb back out of the gravity well again, with all of the weight, complexity, and cost associated with that. Just orbiting and sending down some throwaway robot probes means the mission is less complex and cheaper by orders of magnitude, meaning it can be done in a much shorter timeframe.
I'm embarrassed to say that I've experienced this. I was horrified to learn that they were installing a cell tower on top of an apartment building I was living in at the time. The day it was supposed to go online, I could "feel" it; I started getting dizzy and nauseous going up in the elevator. A few weeks later, I learned that there was a delay and they hadn't even powered the thing up until a week later. Fortunately, finding this out "cured" me of what was essentially a phobia and I haven't had a problem since.
Yeah, there are definitely parts of Neuromancer that are hilariously dated. The one that always sticks out for me is the part where Case has 3MB of stolen RAM that he's trying to move. It sounded impressively futuristic in 1985. Today, not so much.
Since skeletal remains are unlikely to be a danger to the community, they'll probably let the bastard go.
It's OK, the crickets hate lawyers even more than they hate the music.
Don't forget who the true hero of that book was. The Trashcan Man.
In that case, I think our #1 priority should be determining the whereabouts of Matt Frewer.