You're closer than anyone else in this thread has been, but still slightly confused.
Rights are things that you can do without permission and without causing harm to others.
Freedoms are things that you can do.
Rights are freedoms, but the opposite is not always true. I have the freedom to kill someone. I do not have the right to do so. I have the freedom to lie, cheat, and steal in order to gain an advantage. I do not have a right to do any of those things.
Largely, the confusion comes from the way people interpret the Constitution. Speech, for instance, is "free" but should not be a "right". We don't have a "right to say anything we want". We have a "right to freedom of speech". The law defines circumstances when harmful speech or communications are illegal. It gives those circumstances names like "Libel", "Slander", and "Copyright Infringement". I should always be allowed to say what I want, but I should always have to deal with the consequences of doing so. If I say something like, "George W. Bush is a big, fat doody-head," then I should have the freedom to say that, but when George W. Bush gets angry and sends thugs in black glasses after me, I have to deal with the consequences. It isn't nice to call someone a doody-head, and he would be upset at what I said about him. I, therefore, have a right only to freely speak, not a right to express the ideas contained in that free speech.
So, yes, you're free to be paranoid, and you're free to act in a manner suitable to your paranoia. And everyone else is free to continue asking for your personal data and denying you the use of their services (which may include the sales of goods to you) when you refuse to comply with their requests. Eventually, someone will figure out that there's a niche market for people that don't want to give out personal info, and they'll open a store for paranoid people. And then "normal" people will figure out that it's nice not having to answer annoying questions just to get a decently-priced gallon of milk, and they'll flock to Paranoia-Mart. And everyone else will either stop driving the customers away with abrasive marketing tactics, or they'll simply close their doors when people quit buying there.
And when the government comes to Paranoia-Mart and says "where is your customer data, we need it for spying activities, blah blah blah" then Paranoia-Mart only has to say "we don't have any, and good luck getting it from us or our customers." There might be a brief struggle as a retarded government agency or two tries to extract blood from a stone, but in the end, they'll figure out that people have swung the other way, and it'll be another 50 to 100 years before they get to spy on them again. It's a cycle. It always swings the other way for a while.
The hacks writing As the World Turns could never come with anything half as interesting or dramatic as the history of Apple.
Which is why we have As the Apple Turns. Of course, they could do with a few more frequent updates. Very funny, but not as fresh as it used to be. Having kids kinda put a crimp in the website's pace.
That was Earth Cave, not Volcano. First level. From the staircase where you enter, there are 4 paths. Up takes you to a treasure in a room. Right takes you to a couple other paths. But Left and Down make a loop and at the far end of that loop is the place where you meet Giants every step. They have 240 HP and give 879 Exp. and 879 gold. You can meet as many as 4 of them at a time.
Fortunately for most adventurers, this was mentioned on page 64 of the Final Fantasy Explorer's Handbook, included with every copy of the game, along with some handy maps and charts of enemies and equipment.
Squaresoft gave us Rosa, Palom and/or Porom, and Relm long before that.
Every FF game with pre-named characters has the annoying, useless female (or child, or both) with the exception of FF5, and even then, Lenna/Reina comes close.
I played through the original Dragon Warrior in about 4 hours and didn't die even once. HP is at address 00C5, MP is at 00C6, attack power is at 00CC, and your equipment is at 00BE. If you want to shorten your quest to 4 hours like I did, you'll have to step up your experience a few times. Experience is at 00BA and 00BB.
That said, the game sucked ass, and would have been worse if I had played it the "right way". I've tried getting into DW2, 3, and 4, but they never held my interest past the first 10 minutes or so. Final Fantasy has kept my interest enough to keep me buying, until I realized that from here on, they're all gonna suck as bad as FF7. Long live FF3(US), king of RPG's!
1) I was thinking more along the lines of either having it added to your HOA by-laws, formally or informally. Failing that, you can always try to get the local municipality to sell you permits to do some work in their right-of-way. If you call it "local data infrastructure" they'll probably be glad to help. Just don't go higher than county government, because above that they'll likely alert the big regional telco and that can end your plan. Lay some Cat5/5e/6 lines in a conduit and, as neighbors sign up, extend that to their house. Be sure to put a tee-joint in the conduit in front of each house, and be sure to cap each open spot. 2" PVC pipe would be satisfactory for use as "conduit" in this case and would allow for a sufficient number of cables for several neighbors.
2) You don't need to be zoned as a business to get a T1. SBC or any other evil or non-evil phone company will be more than happy to sell you a full T1 regardless of the zoning of your property. They get paid whether it's a business or not and they just don't care. In fact, they sometimes charge less money if it's residential because they know it's not going to be carrying the traffic of a business T1. You also get guaranteed (though not always good) support, unlike DSL/cable where you get to talk to a machine for hours until their call center guy (there's only one) decides to interrupt his WoW session and answer the phone.
3) Typical neighbors might like the extra speed, and IIRC, I did mention VoIP, which could cut down on their phone bills, or negate them entirely. Carrot, meet stick. Also, if you have extra time or more clueful neighbors, you can offer them services they want, like a neighborhood Exchange server or somesuch (yes, yes, I know, MS is evil and so is Exchange).
4) Why the hell would you consider this plan if you didn't own the property? And last I checked, that "$200,000 setup fee" was for you to park your ass in the house without getting arrested for trespassing. It also entitles you to a lot of other property rights as well. Giving you the authority to get a T1 installed is just icing on the cake. Another thing to consider is that maybe your neighbor is a geek and owns his house and is another fellow/.-er reading my previous post, and maybe he'll co-op with you and the rest of the neighborhood on a T1. Don't knock it just because you don't have a way to do it personally. You only need one admin. How many neighbors do you have?
Also the SMB/Duck Hunt dual cart, the Duck Hunt standalone cart, and some other NES game that I'd never heard of. I'm guessing they haven't sold them yet, either.
and they have both made a working TPM a condition of obtaining residential Internet access through them.
Keyword here: "residential".
If you and some of your neighbors all chip in $50/month, you can co-op a T1 with guaranteed up/down speed (instead of the flex you get on "residential" connections) and no restrictions. As long as there is a geek to admin the gateway, everyone on your block has unrestricted, un-TPM-ed, and relatively inexpensive internet access.
A full T1 only costs about $300 'round these parts, and you could even sign up for VoIP and get everyone cheap long distance with it. Provide WiFi if you want. I know all this would take some time, but if you didn't offer a bunch of extra crap (don't offer to host anything, just admin the gateway and hotspots), you could keep it to a minimum.
Water does not contain potential energy in the same way that gasoline does. Gasoline has the potential for an easy chemical reaction to release energy and break it down. Water does not. In the case of a waterfall, the water is absorbing some energy from the effect of gravity. Gravity is basically a by-product of Earth's kinetic (rotational) energy.
The "lifting" of the water is a two-part act, and comes out essentially even for the water particles. The sun (emitting energy) heats the water (solar/heat energy goes in) and the water evaporates (heat energy goes out). Then rain falls (gravitic/kinetic energy goes in), streams run downhill (more energy goes in) and eventually down that waterfall (still more energy goes in) and in the process you use it to turn a wheel (kinetic/gravitic energy is transferred to the wheel as rotation/kinetic). And then the water falls some more (energy goes into the water again) and then hits the pool at the bottom and creates (pressure) waves. These waves carry the energy until some denser material (mud or rock) absorbs the (very small) collision and it no longer has any real effect on anything. I fail to see where any potential energy is involved.
"Potential energy" is one of those overgeneralizations that some people see as an acceptable way to make everything balance out without looking at other possibilities. "Dark matter" is a similar placeholder. These things don't exist, they merely even out equations until a more precise answer is found. Or until someone decides to get lazy and substitute a placeholder for something they really should be pointing out.
In this case, the thing to point out would be the real truth here: Almost everything on Earth is powered by solar energy, including water wheels, windmills, and even petroleum burners (think about plants growing, dying, decaying...). The only non-solar source I can think of is nuclear, and I'm not entirely sure solar energy didn't have a hand in producing the materials for that. The fact is, no system on Earth is break-even for energy. Everything gets solar-powered.
If you're in the US military and are 18 or older, you can buy alcohol at any military base, and can consume alcohol anywhere within the borders of the USA and its territories... legally. You cannot purchase alcohol from a non-base store until you conform to the legal requirements (usually an age limit, and usually 21, though some states have allowed drinking as early as 18) of the state or territory where that store is located.
No, if you distribute 8 apples evenly amongst 0 other people you're not dividing. It has nothing to do with how many apples you still have or don't have, or how many someone else has (especially since there isn't a "someone else"). But the byproduct of not dividing is that the quantity is still the same, just in different hands than you might otherwise expect at the end of a division scenario.
So... depending on how you look at it, either by the grouping of apples or the number of apples that a non-existent person has, it can either be 8 (there are still 8 apples, and they're all in a single group), or 0 (each non-person has 0 apples, but this is less logical than the other possibility since non-people don't exist).
Pure math rarely has a useful answer. That's why we have practical math and logic.
Ah! But it does fix the problem! It fixes the problem of busybodies restricting others based on their own conscience. Busybodies can police themselves and believe they have the world as their oyster, molded (moldy?) in their own image. Meanwhile, the real world marches on and leaves them behind without interruption. It also curtails their "somebody-think-of-the-children" power. Somebody is thinking of the children. That's obviously the reason for a.kids domain. Not only will they be satisfied with having "won" a battle, they'll also be reduced in their capacity to use their favorite moronic argument.
I like what someone else suggested in the last thread about this (very stupid).xxx TLD idea - a "whitelist" in a.kids TLD. No porn allowed. Nothing even remotely close to porn allowed, in fact. Hell, let the freak-ass religious retards regulate it to their liking. Then let schoolkids look at *.kids and nothing else.
Meanwhile, leave the rest of us alone to put up sites about interesting, mature, and even possibly (god forbid!) nude things.
There is a better way. What follows is an outline of a music-industry-killer, step-by-step.
1) Start a record label with some morals. This is very important. This will be the basis for the money-manufacturing setup to follow. It will also piss off the current labels. A good start for "morals" would be Google's "Do no evil" thing. This would probably involve signing a band and retaining exclusive right to distribution for a limited time. Something like 5-10 years, then their music becomes sort of a "free agent".
2) Distribute music in all feasible forms for a reasonable price. A website that sells your music should (at present) sell in these ways:
- non-DRM'ed individual song files for a low price, allow customer to choose format, vary pricing for lossless vs. lossy.
- non-DRM'ed albums for the same low price (multiplied by the number of tracks minus some sort of quantity discount), accompanied by low-res artwork, allow customer to choose format, vary pricing for lossless vs. lossy.
- a plastic disc for a higher price, plus shipping, containing full artwork, allow customer to choose format (CDDA, DVD-A, SACD)
3) Distribute other album materials in various other ways. Be creative here. You could sell album artwork pre-printed on poster-sized paper. You could sell high-res artwork downloads so people could print their own. As Yogurt says in Spaceballs, "Merchandising!"
4) Set up a ticket-sales site for your bands. Offer this as part of the contract, or for a minimal fee. By now, your bands should love you and the word should spread like wildfire that you're the Bestest Record Label Evar. This will only serve to make more money for you and your bands.
5) Set up a scheduling arrangement for your bands so they can easily self-manage tour dates. This is a huge jump. You have to not only schedule your label's bands, you also have to nail down dates with venues. This supplants their agent (pissing him off, undoubtedly). Be sure parts of this are contractually based, making it "part of the package." Which leads to...
6) Set up a scheduling arrangement for venues to request your bands. Come to agreements with the venues to "lend them your ear" when a band is reluctant to play in a particular place. Persuade bands to go to those places. Persuade venues to pick up bands that feel they aren't getting enough work. This is when you become a manager and talent scout simultaneously. Of course, most of this work can be automated once the contracts are signed.
7) Sign up some indie film producers and start selling video on the site. Do the same thing as with the music in steps 1, 2, and 3.
8) Arrange for distribution and showings in theaters. Do the same thing as with the music in steps 4, 5, and 6.
After this, you could continue to grow the business by buying out "catalogs" of music and keeping them for perpetual cash-cow status (like record labels already do), buying films and doing the same, building your own concert/theater venues, encroach upon the live-action theater industry in the same pattern as above, establish retail presence (like Apple did), or any number of other ways to part the masses from their money. As long as you stay humble and keep the "Do no evil" credo, you'll manufacture money. There's no business tactic more cutthroat than the truth.
I find that somewhat humorous as well, since the Windows port of PHP allows for exactly what you describe.
You drop the appropriate DLL's into the system %Path% (which should include the PHP directory) or, if you're using Apache 2, the PHP INI Directory specified in your httpd.conf. Alternatively, you can add them to your php.ini's extension_dir, whatever you set that to be. Then you edit the PHP.INI file and uncomment or add the modules you want to use. Then restart Apache and pray. I say "pray" because Apache chokes when it can't find/load things that way. This usually only happens if you don't have %Path% set to include your PHP directory, though.
So... How many times to I go into PHP and find that it needs a recompile to do what I want it to? Almost never. When is that coming to the Linux version? Or is it too "easy" for Linux people?
That has nothing to do with the hardware and everything to do with the target market of the Macintosh.
See this link for more information, but the basic gist of it is this:
- Sun and PC (read: "Windows") don't gamma-correct anything going to the display. The average graphics card/driver end up with a gamma factor of about 2.0 or 2.1, though.
- The Mac has a standard correction factor of 1.8 due to hardware and display driver output. The reasoning for this is that it supposedly gives better color accuracy for print output. Being a complete know-nothing about graphics, I can't vouch for this.
- SGI's are similar to the Mac, but use a different correction factor. (The link says 2.4. I'll take their word for it.)
The result is that the screen on a Mac looks darker when uncorrected.
Either that, or you're just looking at someone's screen in power-save mode. Auto-dim is how Apple achieves those "amazing" battery life numbers. Remember, kids, Powerbooks are made in the same factories as Vaios and Inspirons. They're just made to Apple's spec instead of Sony's or Dell's.
the Mac hangs on to the application program menu as this shared resource where the app that gets the focus also gets control over the single on-screen menu. That may have been fine back in the day of small screens and limited pixels, but in these days of monster displays and ever more pixels, for crying out loud, give each app its own menu as is done by the Linux window managers and by Windows. The Mac system of you have to think which app has control over the menu is too much a distraction
Incorrect.
The Mac has kept the single menubar concept because it's the right way to do things. If you have a bunch of menus everywhere that do stuff here and there, you might as well just build your entire interface without menubars. Just replace them with dropdowns (combo boxes, for all you Microsofties), since they're exactly the same fricking thing. But wait... that rapes any and every HIG on the planet right in the ass. Twice. With a Garden Weasel.
The universal menubar provides a context menu that never moves. The alternative is a moving target menu - a PITA that is only really useful when there are only a few operations for something. A universal menubar is also always anchored at the top of the screen, so you can fling your mouse forward and your pointer lands on the menubar without the need to aim for it. It also serves as a Windows Taskbar-ish thing, though the Dock (the real MacOS UI abomination, speaking of moving targets) has usurped some of that functionality.
The MacOS 9 menubar was the perfect menubar, with the exception of poorly arranged catch-all menus (remember "Special"?), but you get those with every program (why would "Options" be under "Tools"? What makes that a tool?). You had your clock, app switcher, menus, and system status info all in one spot. It kept out cruft like random documents you didn't want to forget about 6 months ago, apps that you uninstalled 5 minutes after you put the alias there, and multiple copies of things you use daily, but never click the ones in that location. (In case you hadn't noticed, I'm poking sharp sticks into the ribs of the "Quick Launch" and similar taskbars.) There were other, cleaner, faster options for doing things with those UI "leftovers" and temporary messes. I still await the day popup folders return to the MacOS.
Re:Better than the rest, but...
on
The Samus Mystique
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
By reducing other people to things
Umm... People are things. So are trees. So are rocks. So are pieces of paper, houses, shingles on the roof of a house, shingles still in stacks at the hardware store, and boobies. And when I say boobies, I mean... well, about 4 or 5 different things. Red-footed, blue-footed, masked, udders, teats, and a HUGE RACK.
Things are things. See also: Noun.
This is why I hate people that gripe about objectifying other people. Our brains perceive everything as an object, including other people! That's just the way we as humans work. We even have names for objects that represent groups of objects. Words like "traffic" or "galaxy". We have names for objects that represent groups of people, like "race" and "nationality". Our brains identify, clarify, and categorize everything around us.
And then someone gets all touchy-feely and has a fit because they don't like how they're being treated by someone. Here's my advice to that person: walk away. Just walk away and ignore it. They're either clueless or they're baiting you. If you throw a fit, more people will notice, then there will be larger doses of people baiting you, while the rest of everyone who still doesn't give a rat's ass about your problem will begin finding ways to hate you. And the more the baiters get you to gripe, the more people hate you, and the haters' numbers will grow. And then you'll whine and cry and bitch and piss and moan until everyone hates your guts and/or pokes you with a stick to get you to make more fuss. And then (hopefully) someone will shoot you and put you out of our misery. Yes, that's your choice: walk away and shut the hell up or die a miserable death.
The actual text of the preference is "When you insert a music CD:" with a dropdown next to it allowing you to choose what you want it to do. iTunes is capable of understanding their non-standard disks and extracting music from them, but Apple didn't call them by the name "Audio CD".
In OS9, as another poster stated, "autorun" was provided by the Quicktime plugins. Quicktime still has some similar features relating to autoplay of downloaded movies.
In OSX, there is a "CDs & DVDs" preference pane. It has 5 options, all of which are "autorun" options.
Here are the 5 items and their available options on a relatively clean install:
When you insert a blank CD: Ask what to do, Open Finder, Open iTunes, Open Disk Utility, Open other application..., Run script..., Ignore
When you insert a blank DVD: Ask what to do, Open Finder, Open iDVD, Open iTunes, Open Disk Utility, Open other application..., Run script..., Ignore
When you insert a music CD: Open iTunes, Open other application..., Run script..., Ignore
When you insert a picture CD: Open iPhoto, Open other application..., Run script..., Ignore
When you insert a video DVD: Open DVD Player, Open other application..., Run script..., Ignore
Note that there's no autorun for data disks. That's found buried in the/Applications/Utilities folder in the Disk Utility application. Opening the preferences for that gives the following mounting options (along with some other stuff):
[x] Auto-open read-only disk images [ ] Auto-open read-write disk images
This is how.dmg files open automatically when you download one.
It's nowhere near as offensive as Windows Autorun, though.
Create a gift package for your senator of choice. Include a Sony DRM'ed CD. Then send him an email with a trojan-aware payload, expecting the CD to have been run. This should probably include something that bombards him with message popups every couple of minutes saying "Your computer has been breached by Sony Music Entertainment, Ltd. Any attempt to remove the security breach is a violation of USC blah.blah.blah" and spell out the consequences of the DMCA to him (replace the "blah.blah.blah" part with the actual number for the DMCA first). Do that to enough senators and you might see the fall of the DMCA in just a few days' time.
Then, we go for the jugular. The media companies have declared war. We might as well return the favor.
Slashdot Mirror
You're closer than anyone else in this thread has been, but still slightly confused.
Rights are things that you can do without permission and without causing harm to others.
Freedoms are things that you can do.
Rights are freedoms, but the opposite is not always true. I have the freedom to kill someone. I do not have the right to do so. I have the freedom to lie, cheat, and steal in order to gain an advantage. I do not have a right to do any of those things.
Largely, the confusion comes from the way people interpret the Constitution. Speech, for instance, is "free" but should not be a "right". We don't have a "right to say anything we want". We have a "right to freedom of speech". The law defines circumstances when harmful speech or communications are illegal. It gives those circumstances names like "Libel", "Slander", and "Copyright Infringement". I should always be allowed to say what I want, but I should always have to deal with the consequences of doing so. If I say something like, "George W. Bush is a big, fat doody-head," then I should have the freedom to say that, but when George W. Bush gets angry and sends thugs in black glasses after me, I have to deal with the consequences. It isn't nice to call someone a doody-head, and he would be upset at what I said about him. I, therefore, have a right only to freely speak, not a right to express the ideas contained in that free speech.
So, yes, you're free to be paranoid, and you're free to act in a manner suitable to your paranoia. And everyone else is free to continue asking for your personal data and denying you the use of their services (which may include the sales of goods to you) when you refuse to comply with their requests. Eventually, someone will figure out that there's a niche market for people that don't want to give out personal info, and they'll open a store for paranoid people. And then "normal" people will figure out that it's nice not having to answer annoying questions just to get a decently-priced gallon of milk, and they'll flock to Paranoia-Mart. And everyone else will either stop driving the customers away with abrasive marketing tactics, or they'll simply close their doors when people quit buying there.
And when the government comes to Paranoia-Mart and says "where is your customer data, we need it for spying activities, blah blah blah" then Paranoia-Mart only has to say "we don't have any, and good luck getting it from us or our customers." There might be a brief struggle as a retarded government agency or two tries to extract blood from a stone, but in the end, they'll figure out that people have swung the other way, and it'll be another 50 to 100 years before they get to spy on them again. It's a cycle. It always swings the other way for a while.
Sic semper finis - This too shall pass.
The hacks writing As the World Turns could never come with anything half as interesting or dramatic as the history of Apple.
Which is why we have As the Apple Turns. Of course, they could do with a few more frequent updates. Very funny, but not as fresh as it used to be. Having kids kinda put a crimp in the website's pace.
That was Earth Cave, not Volcano. First level. From the staircase where you enter, there are 4 paths. Up takes you to a treasure in a room. Right takes you to a couple other paths. But Left and Down make a loop and at the far end of that loop is the place where you meet Giants every step. They have 240 HP and give 879 Exp. and 879 gold. You can meet as many as 4 of them at a time.
Fortunately for most adventurers, this was mentioned on page 64 of the Final Fantasy Explorer's Handbook, included with every copy of the game, along with some handy maps and charts of enemies and equipment.
Squaresoft gave us Yuffie and Rikku
Newb.
Squaresoft gave us Rosa, Palom and/or Porom, and Relm long before that.
Every FF game with pre-named characters has the annoying, useless female (or child, or both) with the exception of FF5, and even then, Lenna/Reina comes close.
I played through the original Dragon Warrior in about 4 hours and didn't die even once. HP is at address 00C5, MP is at 00C6, attack power is at 00CC, and your equipment is at 00BE. If you want to shorten your quest to 4 hours like I did, you'll have to step up your experience a few times. Experience is at 00BA and 00BB.
That said, the game sucked ass, and would have been worse if I had played it the "right way". I've tried getting into DW2, 3, and 4, but they never held my interest past the first 10 minutes or so. Final Fantasy has kept my interest enough to keep me buying, until I realized that from here on, they're all gonna suck as bad as FF7. Long live FF3(US), king of RPG's!
Let the flamewar commence!
1) I was thinking more along the lines of either having it added to your HOA by-laws, formally or informally. Failing that, you can always try to get the local municipality to sell you permits to do some work in their right-of-way. If you call it "local data infrastructure" they'll probably be glad to help. Just don't go higher than county government, because above that they'll likely alert the big regional telco and that can end your plan. Lay some Cat5/5e/6 lines in a conduit and, as neighbors sign up, extend that to their house. Be sure to put a tee-joint in the conduit in front of each house, and be sure to cap each open spot. 2" PVC pipe would be satisfactory for use as "conduit" in this case and would allow for a sufficient number of cables for several neighbors.
/.-er reading my previous post, and maybe he'll co-op with you and the rest of the neighborhood on a T1. Don't knock it just because you don't have a way to do it personally. You only need one admin. How many neighbors do you have?
2) You don't need to be zoned as a business to get a T1. SBC or any other evil or non-evil phone company will be more than happy to sell you a full T1 regardless of the zoning of your property. They get paid whether it's a business or not and they just don't care. In fact, they sometimes charge less money if it's residential because they know it's not going to be carrying the traffic of a business T1. You also get guaranteed (though not always good) support, unlike DSL/cable where you get to talk to a machine for hours until their call center guy (there's only one) decides to interrupt his WoW session and answer the phone.
3) Typical neighbors might like the extra speed, and IIRC, I did mention VoIP, which could cut down on their phone bills, or negate them entirely. Carrot, meet stick. Also, if you have extra time or more clueful neighbors, you can offer them services they want, like a neighborhood Exchange server or somesuch (yes, yes, I know, MS is evil and so is Exchange).
4) Why the hell would you consider this plan if you didn't own the property? And last I checked, that "$200,000 setup fee" was for you to park your ass in the house without getting arrested for trespassing. It also entitles you to a lot of other property rights as well. Giving you the authority to get a T1 installed is just icing on the cake. Another thing to consider is that maybe your neighbor is a geek and owns his house and is another fellow
One word: Goodwill.
The one in my area has it.
Also the SMB/Duck Hunt dual cart, the Duck Hunt standalone cart, and some other NES game that I'd never heard of. I'm guessing they haven't sold them yet, either.
and they have both made a working TPM a condition of obtaining residential Internet access through them.
Keyword here: "residential".
If you and some of your neighbors all chip in $50/month, you can co-op a T1 with guaranteed up/down speed (instead of the flex you get on "residential" connections) and no restrictions. As long as there is a geek to admin the gateway, everyone on your block has unrestricted, un-TPM-ed, and relatively inexpensive internet access.
A full T1 only costs about $300 'round these parts, and you could even sign up for VoIP and get everyone cheap long distance with it. Provide WiFi if you want. I know all this would take some time, but if you didn't offer a bunch of extra crap (don't offer to host anything, just admin the gateway and hotspots), you could keep it to a minimum.
Water does not contain potential energy in the same way that gasoline does. Gasoline has the potential for an easy chemical reaction to release energy and break it down. Water does not. In the case of a waterfall, the water is absorbing some energy from the effect of gravity. Gravity is basically a by-product of Earth's kinetic (rotational) energy.
The "lifting" of the water is a two-part act, and comes out essentially even for the water particles. The sun (emitting energy) heats the water (solar/heat energy goes in) and the water evaporates (heat energy goes out). Then rain falls (gravitic/kinetic energy goes in), streams run downhill (more energy goes in) and eventually down that waterfall (still more energy goes in) and in the process you use it to turn a wheel (kinetic/gravitic energy is transferred to the wheel as rotation/kinetic). And then the water falls some more (energy goes into the water again) and then hits the pool at the bottom and creates (pressure) waves. These waves carry the energy until some denser material (mud or rock) absorbs the (very small) collision and it no longer has any real effect on anything. I fail to see where any potential energy is involved.
"Potential energy" is one of those overgeneralizations that some people see as an acceptable way to make everything balance out without looking at other possibilities. "Dark matter" is a similar placeholder. These things don't exist, they merely even out equations until a more precise answer is found. Or until someone decides to get lazy and substitute a placeholder for something they really should be pointing out.
In this case, the thing to point out would be the real truth here: Almost everything on Earth is powered by solar energy, including water wheels, windmills, and even petroleum burners (think about plants growing, dying, decaying...). The only non-solar source I can think of is nuclear, and I'm not entirely sure solar energy didn't have a hand in producing the materials for that. The fact is, no system on Earth is break-even for energy. Everything gets solar-powered.
That's not completely true.
If you're in the US military and are 18 or older, you can buy alcohol at any military base, and can consume alcohol anywhere within the borders of the USA and its territories... legally. You cannot purchase alcohol from a non-base store until you conform to the legal requirements (usually an age limit, and usually 21, though some states have allowed drinking as early as 18) of the state or territory where that store is located.
No, if you distribute 8 apples evenly amongst 0 other people you're not dividing. It has nothing to do with how many apples you still have or don't have, or how many someone else has (especially since there isn't a "someone else"). But the byproduct of not dividing is that the quantity is still the same, just in different hands than you might otherwise expect at the end of a division scenario.
So... depending on how you look at it, either by the grouping of apples or the number of apples that a non-existent person has, it can either be 8 (there are still 8 apples, and they're all in a single group), or 0 (each non-person has 0 apples, but this is less logical than the other possibility since non-people don't exist).
Pure math rarely has a useful answer. That's why we have practical math and logic.
Division by zero is quite easy, and is more of a logic problem than a mathematical one.
You have 8 apples. Divide them evenly amonst your 0 children. YOU STILL HAVE 8 APPLES.
Division by zero is non-division. Afterward, you're left with the same number you didn't operate on.
Problem solved.
No, she calls him "FoE". Occasionally, she might refer to him as "worthy opponent" as well.
Ah! But it does fix the problem! It fixes the problem of busybodies restricting others based on their own conscience. Busybodies can police themselves and believe they have the world as their oyster, molded (moldy?) in their own image. Meanwhile, the real world marches on and leaves them behind without interruption. It also curtails their "somebody-think-of-the-children" power. Somebody is thinking of the children. That's obviously the reason for a .kids domain. Not only will they be satisfied with having "won" a battle, they'll also be reduced in their capacity to use their favorite moronic argument.
I like what someone else suggested in the last thread about this (very stupid) .xxx TLD idea - a "whitelist" in a .kids TLD. No porn allowed. Nothing even remotely close to porn allowed, in fact. Hell, let the freak-ass religious retards regulate it to their liking. Then let schoolkids look at *.kids and nothing else.
Meanwhile, leave the rest of us alone to put up sites about interesting, mature, and even possibly (god forbid!) nude things.
There is a better way. What follows is an outline of a music-industry-killer, step-by-step.
1) Start a record label with some morals.
This is very important. This will be the basis for the money-manufacturing setup to follow. It will also piss off the current labels. A good start for "morals" would be Google's "Do no evil" thing. This would probably involve signing a band and retaining exclusive right to distribution for a limited time. Something like 5-10 years, then their music becomes sort of a "free agent".
2) Distribute music in all feasible forms for a reasonable price.
A website that sells your music should (at present) sell in these ways:
- non-DRM'ed individual song files for a low price, allow customer to choose format, vary pricing for lossless vs. lossy.
- non-DRM'ed albums for the same low price (multiplied by the number of tracks minus some sort of quantity discount), accompanied by low-res artwork, allow customer to choose format, vary pricing for lossless vs. lossy.
- a plastic disc for a higher price, plus shipping, containing full artwork, allow customer to choose format (CDDA, DVD-A, SACD)
3) Distribute other album materials in various other ways. Be creative here.
You could sell album artwork pre-printed on poster-sized paper. You could sell high-res artwork downloads so people could print their own. As Yogurt says in Spaceballs, "Merchandising!"
4) Set up a ticket-sales site for your bands. Offer this as part of the contract, or for a minimal fee.
By now, your bands should love you and the word should spread like wildfire that you're the Bestest Record Label Evar. This will only serve to make more money for you and your bands.
5) Set up a scheduling arrangement for your bands so they can easily self-manage tour dates.
This is a huge jump. You have to not only schedule your label's bands, you also have to nail down dates with venues. This supplants their agent (pissing him off, undoubtedly). Be sure parts of this are contractually based, making it "part of the package." Which leads to...
6) Set up a scheduling arrangement for venues to request your bands.
Come to agreements with the venues to "lend them your ear" when a band is reluctant to play in a particular place. Persuade bands to go to those places. Persuade venues to pick up bands that feel they aren't getting enough work. This is when you become a manager and talent scout simultaneously. Of course, most of this work can be automated once the contracts are signed.
7) Sign up some indie film producers and start selling video on the site.
Do the same thing as with the music in steps 1, 2, and 3.
8) Arrange for distribution and showings in theaters.
Do the same thing as with the music in steps 4, 5, and 6.
After this, you could continue to grow the business by buying out "catalogs" of music and keeping them for perpetual cash-cow status (like record labels already do), buying films and doing the same, building your own concert/theater venues, encroach upon the live-action theater industry in the same pattern as above, establish retail presence (like Apple did), or any number of other ways to part the masses from their money. As long as you stay humble and keep the "Do no evil" credo, you'll manufacture money. There's no business tactic more cutthroat than the truth.
Sounds like a good time to test out those new BOFH-Brand(tm) "fuses" found in the nail aisle of your local hardware store.
I find that somewhat humorous as well, since the Windows port of PHP allows for exactly what you describe.
You drop the appropriate DLL's into the system %Path% (which should include the PHP directory) or, if you're using Apache 2, the PHP INI Directory specified in your httpd.conf. Alternatively, you can add them to your php.ini's extension_dir, whatever you set that to be. Then you edit the PHP.INI file and uncomment or add the modules you want to use. Then restart Apache and pray. I say "pray" because Apache chokes when it can't find/load things that way. This usually only happens if you don't have %Path% set to include your PHP directory, though.
So... How many times to I go into PHP and find that it needs a recompile to do what I want it to? Almost never. When is that coming to the Linux version? Or is it too "easy" for Linux people?
That has nothing to do with the hardware and everything to do with the target market of the Macintosh.
See this link for more information, but the basic gist of it is this:
- Sun and PC (read: "Windows") don't gamma-correct anything going to the display. The average graphics card/driver end up with a gamma factor of about 2.0 or 2.1, though.
- The Mac has a standard correction factor of 1.8 due to hardware and display driver output. The reasoning for this is that it supposedly gives better color accuracy for print output. Being a complete know-nothing about graphics, I can't vouch for this.
- SGI's are similar to the Mac, but use a different correction factor. (The link says 2.4. I'll take their word for it.)
The result is that the screen on a Mac looks darker when uncorrected.
Either that, or you're just looking at someone's screen in power-save mode. Auto-dim is how Apple achieves those "amazing" battery life numbers. Remember, kids, Powerbooks are made in the same factories as Vaios and Inspirons. They're just made to Apple's spec instead of Sony's or Dell's.
the Mac hangs on to the application program menu as this shared resource where the app that gets the focus also gets control over the single on-screen menu. That may have been fine back in the day of small screens and limited pixels, but in these days of monster displays and ever more pixels, for crying out loud, give each app its own menu as is done by the Linux window managers and by Windows. The Mac system of you have to think which app has control over the menu is too much a distraction
Incorrect.
The Mac has kept the single menubar concept because it's the right way to do things. If you have a bunch of menus everywhere that do stuff here and there, you might as well just build your entire interface without menubars. Just replace them with dropdowns (combo boxes, for all you Microsofties), since they're exactly the same fricking thing. But wait... that rapes any and every HIG on the planet right in the ass. Twice. With a Garden Weasel.
The universal menubar provides a context menu that never moves. The alternative is a moving target menu - a PITA that is only really useful when there are only a few operations for something. A universal menubar is also always anchored at the top of the screen, so you can fling your mouse forward and your pointer lands on the menubar without the need to aim for it. It also serves as a Windows Taskbar-ish thing, though the Dock (the real MacOS UI abomination, speaking of moving targets) has usurped some of that functionality.
The MacOS 9 menubar was the perfect menubar, with the exception of poorly arranged catch-all menus (remember "Special"?), but you get those with every program (why would "Options" be under "Tools"? What makes that a tool?). You had your clock, app switcher, menus, and system status info all in one spot. It kept out cruft like random documents you didn't want to forget about 6 months ago, apps that you uninstalled 5 minutes after you put the alias there, and multiple copies of things you use daily, but never click the ones in that location. (In case you hadn't noticed, I'm poking sharp sticks into the ribs of the "Quick Launch" and similar taskbars.) There were other, cleaner, faster options for doing things with those UI "leftovers" and temporary messes. I still await the day popup folders return to the MacOS.
By reducing other people to things
Umm... People are things. So are trees. So are rocks. So are pieces of paper, houses, shingles on the roof of a house, shingles still in stacks at the hardware store, and boobies. And when I say boobies, I mean... well, about 4 or 5 different things. Red-footed, blue-footed, masked, udders, teats, and a HUGE RACK.
Things are things. See also: Noun.
This is why I hate people that gripe about objectifying other people. Our brains perceive everything as an object, including other people! That's just the way we as humans work. We even have names for objects that represent groups of objects. Words like "traffic" or "galaxy". We have names for objects that represent groups of people, like "race" and "nationality". Our brains identify, clarify, and categorize everything around us.
And then someone gets all touchy-feely and has a fit because they don't like how they're being treated by someone. Here's my advice to that person: walk away. Just walk away and ignore it. They're either clueless or they're baiting you. If you throw a fit, more people will notice, then there will be larger doses of people baiting you, while the rest of everyone who still doesn't give a rat's ass about your problem will begin finding ways to hate you. And the more the baiters get you to gripe, the more people hate you, and the haters' numbers will grow. And then you'll whine and cry and bitch and piss and moan until everyone hates your guts and/or pokes you with a stick to get you to make more fuss. And then (hopefully) someone will shoot you and put you out of our misery. Yes, that's your choice: walk away and shut the hell up or die a miserable death.
Erm... sorry. I got a little carried away there.
Samus isn't Randian
Aww... Oh, wait. That's not the same word. Nevermind.
The actual text of the preference is "When you insert a music CD:" with a dropdown next to it allowing you to choose what you want it to do. iTunes is capable of understanding their non-standard disks and extracting music from them, but Apple didn't call them by the name "Audio CD".
In OS9, as another poster stated, "autorun" was provided by the Quicktime plugins. Quicktime still has some similar features relating to autoplay of downloaded movies.
In OSX, there is a "CDs & DVDs" preference pane. It has 5 options, all of which are "autorun" options.
Here are the 5 items and their available options on a relatively clean install:
Note that there's no autorun for data disks. That's found buried in the
This is how
It's nowhere near as offensive as Windows Autorun, though.
That would kick ass.
Create a gift package for your senator of choice. Include a Sony DRM'ed CD. Then send him an email with a trojan-aware payload, expecting the CD to have been run. This should probably include something that bombards him with message popups every couple of minutes saying "Your computer has been breached by Sony Music Entertainment, Ltd. Any attempt to remove the security breach is a violation of USC blah.blah.blah" and spell out the consequences of the DMCA to him (replace the "blah.blah.blah" part with the actual number for the DMCA first). Do that to enough senators and you might see the fall of the DMCA in just a few days' time.
Then, we go for the jugular. The media companies have declared war. We might as well return the favor.