Two out of three negative reviews at zd... fairly typical for MS updates. I still remember the time I was up until 1am trying to fix a server that crashed because of a MS patch. No thank you.
Heard way too many horror stories about SP3 and decided not to take the chance (since SP2 killed my system and required a complete reinstall). Are there any standalone patches for SP2 available?
A flashlight and a small mirror on a stick...only cutting edge technology will do for NASA...
What they didn't tell you is that it is a $5.7 million dollar flashlight and a $19 million dollar stick, specifically designed to contain only bits of wood that don't grow in Utah.
Not that anybody cares, but under the rules of the electoral college if 51% of New Mexico, Utah, West Virginia, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Alaska, D.C.,Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming vote for Bush and the other 49% of each state + 100% of California votes for Gore then you would have 42,353,311 voting for Gore, winning 55 electoral votes and 8,827,853 voting for Bush winning 59 electoral votes.
I don't know why people keep talking about how Gore won the popular vote - it just doesn't matter.
Are you scared yet or do you want to wait till the news starts referring to Bush as "Great Leader". Isn't bad enough they refer to him as the President when he lost the election.
Bob Dole lost the election, but was able to recover through the use of Viagra.
It was back in the early days of the shuttle program: there was a Coke version and a Pepsi version, somewhat different mechanisms IIRC correctly but the same general concept. NASA was very interested in making sure that astronauts could enjoy bubbles in 0G
The irony here is that a shyster can generally be determined by the frequency with which the attorney sues... so even if he does get to court and gives a compelling case, he's basically showing the characteristics of one by suing everyone he can find.
Can't beat publicity like that... very good for business.
Makes you think indeed.... "The charges were the culmination of a three-year FBI investigation" - that's three years involving who knows how many monetary and manpower resources devoted to uncompensated service to the ilk of the MPAA. I would -much- rather these resources be spent on making sure that the -real- bad guys don't take out another skyscraper or mall.
Also shows just how heartless these MPAA people are: as the nation mourned the loss of thousands of people on 9/11 they're jumping up and down demanding (well, stuffing the war chests of their congressmen is more likely) that instead of looking for -terrorists- the FBI should be out preventing poor quality copies of TV shows from being viewed then deleted. Even worse is that all of those congressmen cheerfully accepted the... ahem... campaign donations in exchange for ensuring that the FBI waste precious resources over such a trivial issue.
I disagree with the moderation: by placing a 'troll' label the moderator is saying that the question -should not be asked- which is an entirely invalid and incorrect viewpoint. With any luck at all the metamod will catch up with this individual.
The fundamental question is: can we as a people trust the government to do what they say? Why is anything less than 100% faith and trust in an unelected, unaccountable individual viewed as a crackpot out looking for trouble?
Again, the question is: if the government says they will/will not do something, why are people such as the anonymous moderator so absolutely, 100% positive that the matter can be put to rest and nobody ever needs even -consider- the possibility that they will continue?
Oh yeah... Poindexter never backtracked on anything....
Why does everybody assume that just because they -claim- that they are scrapping the program it will actually -be- scrapped? Do we have any assurances that the program won't simply be classified and carried out under cloak of government secrecy?
Oh yeah... that's right, elected officials, appointees and their employees NEVER lie. EVER. If they say they will/won't do something it is ALWAYS true.
1. Keep track of how users enlarge/reduce the font size: if sites that use a 10 point font are repeatedly enlarged to 14 or 16 point then it is fairly safe to assume that the user has poor eyesight and all sites with tiny text should automatically be sized up.
2. Keep track of typical surfing hours. If a user tends to start checking sites every night at 6:00pm then at 5:50pm the browser should start to pre-fetch the preferred sites. If my habits are to flick through ESPN for 15 minutes then/. then the weather underground then the browser should be able to pick up on this and start loading pages accordingly.
3. Some people have mice that don't act properly or have really tiny mouse pads/movement areas which means that they repeatedly have to lift the mouse, shift it over and continue moving to point at what they want. These pauses in movement are consistent and shouldn't be too hard to identify and related to specific web sites. Set the browser to adjust the movement rate automatically so the pointer gets to where it typically goes on that specific site without having to lift and reset.
4. On media sites (MSNBC, for example), users would tend to view specific sections every day. When I hit MSNBC I want the system to pre-fetch the technology section and opinions. When I hit the local paper I want the county news section, the commuting column and the box scores. When I type www.foxnews.com I want to see the main page, the politics section and Fox Life. The browser should be able to determine which links I hit every time and start the download.
5. The browser should ask me if I'd like to play a game of chess then when it notices that my favorite basketball team blew the series start a game of global thermonuclear tic tac toe. (Or at the very least, if it sees that I always check www.the-losing-{whoever}.com for the scores and notices that the {whoever} lost last night's game then display lots of:(s, direct me to a whine and moan board and order a keg.
Almost every rebate I've ever seen requires the UPC to be cut from the box and sent in along with. If Best Buy wanted to stop the practice then they could simply refuse to accept returns where the UPC has been removed.
The best part is that the shareholders were told "profits this year were $x.xx" while the IRS was told "profits this year were $0.00" - to make the tax code fair the profits reported to shareholders and the profits reported to the IRS should always be equal.
But a point about corporate taxes in general:
Corporations ALWAYS pay -ZERO- taxes. All tax expense is passed along to the customer. In the case of Microsoft and Cisco any additional taxes they pay are recovered, often from schools (which get their money from local taxpayers) and other government offices. Whatever tax liability Microsoft pays is also passed along to people who buy a new car because Ford has to pay Microsoft enough to cover Microsoft's tax expense, and then Ford will pass that along to you.
There were also reports that some of the best, most experiences anti-avalanche techs at ski resorts have experienced difficulty. The guys who winter here and summer on the upside-down part of the globe (who are often Aussies or Kiwis) suddenly found that since they were not US residents/citizens they were no longer allowed to blast ski slopes safe because even the ski patrol suddenly needed several additional layers of federal clearance to use the same avalanche rockets they've been using for years.
in FCC v. PACIFICA FOUNDATION, 438 U.S. 726 (1978) we read:
the individual's right to be left alone plainly outweighs the First Amendment rights of an intruder
See also CAREY v. BROWN, 447 U.S. 455 (1980),
and in BOLGER v. YOUNGS DRUG PRODUCTS CORP., 463 U.S. 60 (1983) we read
We have often recognized that individuals have a legitimate "right to be left alone" "in the privacy of the home," FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726, 748 [463 U.S. 60, 78] (1978), "the one place where people ordinarily have the right not to be assaulted by uninvited and offensive sights and sounds." Id., at 759 (opinion of POWELL, J.).
CALIFORNIA v. CIRAOLO, 476 U.S. 207 (1986)
FRISBY v. SCHULTZ, 487 U.S. 474 (1988)
DENVER AREA EDUCATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS CONSORTIUM, INC., et al. v. FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION et al., ___ U.S. ___ (1996)
Your right to be "left alone" just doesn't exist.
I don't think so. And neither does the supreme court.
It is a good start, but in the end not much will change. Your average consumer doesn't care much about copy-protected or not-copy-protected CDs and even if they have "this product does not conform to the CD standard" in big bold letters on the cover of the latest hairball that Brittany Spears coughed up they will still buy it just because they have to own whatever it is that Brittany Spears puts out.
I am waiting for a law that says that producers have a choice: they may a) allow consumers to back up their music/movies/games or b) agree to replace on demand and without charge any CD/DVD that has been damaged and is no longer playable.
In the Detroit area the county emergency management people are complaining that Comcast is blocking the emergency networks that were used to coordinate the evacuation of a hospital that had a fire during the blackout last summer. They also used this network for y2k traffic, and is used to coordinate severe weather-related activities.
First the amateurs beat off swatch's asinine to broadcast ads in the middle of 144 now this.
But I thought that hams where saying that BPL would destroy radio communication for 100's of miles around? This video only shows the effect when they are very near the powerlines.
If you live in a urban/suburban area, look around you: how far can you get from any powerline? While it is true that the interference is subject to inverse-square and dies out rather quickly, if by the time you get out of range of one power line you are getting into the range of another it doesn't take much for 100s of square miles to be radio wastelands. What is the maximum distance you can ever be from a power line in New York City? Los Angeles? Washington, DC? Chicago?
WordPerfect was created by a professor and a marching band director at Brigham Young University. It was practically given away to law students all over the country. When these students because full-fledged bloodsucking leaches and were the first generation in the law firms to have grown up with computers they told the powers that were that they needed... WordPerfect. And so the standard was born. Wise marketing.
Um, I haven't seen voters being able to vote against copy protection EVER.
No, but they get to vote Orrin Hatch back into office every few years knowing full well how he'll vote.
There are 100 "real" Senators, plus "shadow" senators from DC/Puerto Rico. There are 435ish representatives. To my knowledge not a single seat has -ever- been filled with a new lump of fat over digital rights from the consumer's point of view. The message is clear: in the eyes of federal representation this issue is irrelevant: backing consumer protection in the arena of copyright management is a worthless, unproductive, non-issue that has no value whatsoever to the powers that be on the Hill.
That simple.
When enough people put down the weed, the Half-Live, the Quake, the beer (near beer for those under 21 who don't live near the Ontario border) and chasing things in halter tops and ACTUALLY VOTE for people who support the rights of consumers nothing will change.
And the Mickey Mouse Preservation Act will again be passed in another decade or so.
This concept that computers are magically going to convert apathetic, over-sugared, over-caffeinated, over-Game Boy'ed, over-sexed, over-stimulated (and because none of this has anything to do with hyperactivity so we'd better put all of the darlings on drugs) into scholars is without merit.
We have an entire generation of compu-phobes, unable to install anti-virus software, unable to make their VCR clocks stop flashing 12:00, but they are masters at conceptual education and just -know- that (in the case of Michigan) giving every 6th grader a laptop is going to make all the difference in the world. They don't have a clue what these laptops can be used FOR, but they KNOW that it is important that every 6th grader knows how to write 50 words into a Powerpoint presentation instead of learning how to construct a logical, grammatical paragraph that can be scored by the computers at SAT-central.
Weeeeee! Just wait until a class of 40 can no longer email their.ppt file to the teacher for 30 seconds of scoring because the entire class has been spammed into oblivion. Then again, maybe somebody can do a science project studying if all of those p3.n1.s pills actually work.
People aren't all that accepting of government surveilance, copy protected CDs, DVD-CSS, etc.
XY-bovine excrement. Who was the last elected official to be recalled or voted out for approving city-run cameras in public places? What are the odds that Sen Orrin Hatch (R-UT) will lost the next election over his absolute embracement of copy-protecting CDs and the use of the FBI to win the war on Napster?
People will accept anything as long as they don't have to cast an intelligent vote (or even vote at all). So long as beer is cheap and plentiful and they can choose between the commercials on 250 channels being broadcast at any given moment then they will happily take whatever abuse is sent their way. Young 20-somethings care about copy protection. Geriatrics care about free money and health care. Which group votes in a larger block? Which group receives attention?
Look at all of the people in this country who hate spam. How long did it take congress to take entirely ineffective action (which everybody told them wouldn't work to begin with). Even when most people care about an issue it STILL doesn't get anything done.
Now that the FCC is moving towards a broadcast flag for radio, how long until all radio broadcasts must be digital, forever ending the experimentation with crystal radio sets?
In 1954 Ann Hodges was asleep on her couch when a meteorite came through the roof and hit her, leaving a nasty bruise. The landlady of the house won ownership in court. (Sylacauga, Alabama)
Slashdot Mirror
Two out of three negative reviews at zd... fairly typical for MS updates. I still remember the time I was up until 1am trying to fix a server that crashed because of a MS patch. No thank you.
Heard way too many horror stories about SP3 and decided not to take the chance (since SP2 killed my system and required a complete reinstall). Are there any standalone patches for SP2 available?
What they didn't tell you is that it is a $5.7 million dollar flashlight and a $19 million dollar stick, specifically designed to contain only bits of wood that don't grow in Utah.
I don't know why people keep talking about how Gore won the popular vote - it just doesn't matter.
Bob Dole lost the election, but was able to recover through the use of Viagra.
It was back in the early days of the shuttle program: there was a Coke version and a Pepsi version, somewhat different mechanisms IIRC correctly but the same general concept. NASA was very interested in making sure that astronauts could enjoy bubbles in 0G
Can't beat publicity like that... very good for business.
Also shows just how heartless these MPAA people are: as the nation mourned the loss of thousands of people on 9/11 they're jumping up and down demanding (well, stuffing the war chests of their congressmen is more likely) that instead of looking for -terrorists- the FBI should be out preventing poor quality copies of TV shows from being viewed then deleted. Even worse is that all of those congressmen cheerfully accepted the ... ahem... campaign donations in exchange for ensuring that the FBI waste precious resources over such a trivial issue.
The fundamental question is: can we as a people trust the government to do what they say? Why is anything less than 100% faith and trust in an unelected, unaccountable individual viewed as a crackpot out looking for trouble?
Again, the question is: if the government says they will/will not do something, why are people such as the anonymous moderator so absolutely, 100% positive that the matter can be put to rest and nobody ever needs even -consider- the possibility that they will continue?
Oh yeah... Poindexter never backtracked on anything....
Oh yeah... that's right, elected officials, appointees and their employees NEVER lie. EVER. If they say they will/won't do something it is ALWAYS true.
2. Keep track of typical surfing hours. If a user tends to start checking sites every night at 6:00pm then at 5:50pm the browser should start to pre-fetch the preferred sites. If my habits are to flick through ESPN for 15 minutes then /. then the weather underground then the browser should be able to pick up on this and start loading pages accordingly.
3. Some people have mice that don't act properly or have really tiny mouse pads/movement areas which means that they repeatedly have to lift the mouse, shift it over and continue moving to point at what they want. These pauses in movement are consistent and shouldn't be too hard to identify and related to specific web sites. Set the browser to adjust the movement rate automatically so the pointer gets to where it typically goes on that specific site without having to lift and reset.
4. On media sites (MSNBC, for example), users would tend to view specific sections every day. When I hit MSNBC I want the system to pre-fetch the technology section and opinions. When I hit the local paper I want the county news section, the commuting column and the box scores. When I type www.foxnews.com I want to see the main page, the politics section and Fox Life. The browser should be able to determine which links I hit every time and start the download.
5. The browser should ask me if I'd like to play a game of chess then when it notices that my favorite basketball team blew the series start a game of global thermonuclear tic tac toe. (Or at the very least, if it sees that I always check www.the-losing-{whoever}.com for the scores and notices that the {whoever} lost last night's game then display lots of :(s, direct me to a whine and moan board and order a keg.
"They told me that terrorists were using the internet so I feel it important to track 12 year old boys checking out Nancy Drew Mystery novels."
apathy
Not sure if the rules are still the same, but as recently as 2000 Cisco paid -zero- federal income tax because they were allowed to deduct the profit made when employees exercised their stock options. This article is from the San Francisco Chronicle - Cisco wiped out 1.8 billion (with a 'B') in tax liability and Microsoft avoided about twice that.
The best part is that the shareholders were told "profits this year were $x.xx" while the IRS was told "profits this year were $0.00" - to make the tax code fair the profits reported to shareholders and the profits reported to the IRS should always be equal.
But a point about corporate taxes in general:
Corporations ALWAYS pay -ZERO- taxes. All tax expense is passed along to the customer. In the case of Microsoft and Cisco any additional taxes they pay are recovered, often from schools (which get their money from local taxpayers) and other government offices. Whatever tax liability Microsoft pays is also passed along to people who buy a new car because Ford has to pay Microsoft enough to cover Microsoft's tax expense, and then Ford will pass that along to you.
There were also reports that some of the best, most experiences anti-avalanche techs at ski resorts have experienced difficulty. The guys who winter here and summer on the upside-down part of the globe (who are often Aussies or Kiwis) suddenly found that since they were not US residents/citizens they were no longer allowed to blast ski slopes safe because even the ski patrol suddenly needed several additional layers of federal clearance to use the same avalanche rockets they've been using for years.
The Supreme Court begs to differ.
ROWAN v. U. S. POST OFFICE DEPT. , 397 U.S. 728
in FCC v. PACIFICA FOUNDATION, 438 U.S. 726 (1978) we read:
See also CAREY v. BROWN, 447 U.S. 455 (1980), and in BOLGER v. YOUNGS DRUG PRODUCTS CORP., 463 U.S. 60 (1983) we read
CALIFORNIA v. CIRAOLO, 476 U.S. 207 (1986)
FRISBY v. SCHULTZ, 487 U.S. 474 (1988)
DENVER AREA EDUCATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS CONSORTIUM, INC., et al. v. FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION et al., ___ U.S. ___ (1996)
I don't think so. And neither does the supreme court.
I am waiting for a law that says that producers have a choice: they may a) allow consumers to back up their music/movies/games or b) agree to replace on demand and without charge any CD/DVD that has been damaged and is no longer playable.
First the amateurs beat off swatch's asinine to broadcast ads in the middle of 144 now this.
If you live in a urban/suburban area, look around you: how far can you get from any powerline? While it is true that the interference is subject to inverse-square and dies out rather quickly, if by the time you get out of range of one power line you are getting into the range of another it doesn't take much for 100s of square miles to be radio wastelands. What is the maximum distance you can ever be from a power line in New York City? Los Angeles? Washington, DC? Chicago?
WordPerfect was created by a professor and a marching band director at Brigham Young University. It was practically given away to law students all over the country. When these students because full-fledged bloodsucking leaches and were the first generation in the law firms to have grown up with computers they told the powers that were that they needed... WordPerfect. And so the standard was born. Wise marketing.
No, but they get to vote Orrin Hatch back into office every few years knowing full well how he'll vote.
There are 100 "real" Senators, plus "shadow" senators from DC/Puerto Rico. There are 435ish representatives. To my knowledge not a single seat has -ever- been filled with a new lump of fat over digital rights from the consumer's point of view. The message is clear: in the eyes of federal representation this issue is irrelevant: backing consumer protection in the arena of copyright management is a worthless, unproductive, non-issue that has no value whatsoever to the powers that be on the Hill.
That simple.
When enough people put down the weed, the Half-Live, the Quake, the beer (near beer for those under 21 who don't live near the Ontario border) and chasing things in halter tops and ACTUALLY VOTE for people who support the rights of consumers nothing will change.
And the Mickey Mouse Preservation Act will again be passed in another decade or so.
We have an entire generation of compu-phobes, unable to install anti-virus software, unable to make their VCR clocks stop flashing 12:00, but they are masters at conceptual education and just -know- that (in the case of Michigan) giving every 6th grader a laptop is going to make all the difference in the world. They don't have a clue what these laptops can be used FOR, but they KNOW that it is important that every 6th grader knows how to write 50 words into a Powerpoint presentation instead of learning how to construct a logical, grammatical paragraph that can be scored by the computers at SAT-central.
Weeeeee! Just wait until a class of 40 can no longer email their .ppt file to the teacher for 30 seconds of scoring because the entire class has been spammed into oblivion. Then again, maybe somebody can do a science project studying if all of those p3.n1.s pills actually work.
People will accept anything as long as they don't have to cast an intelligent vote (or even vote at all). So long as beer is cheap and plentiful and they can choose between the commercials on 250 channels being broadcast at any given moment then they will happily take whatever abuse is sent their way. Young 20-somethings care about copy protection. Geriatrics care about free money and health care. Which group votes in a larger block? Which group receives attention?
Look at all of the people in this country who hate spam. How long did it take congress to take entirely ineffective action (which everybody told them wouldn't work to begin with). Even when most people care about an issue it STILL doesn't get anything done.
Now that the FCC is moving towards a broadcast flag for radio, how long until all radio broadcasts must be digital, forever ending the experimentation with crystal radio sets?
In 1954 Ann Hodges was asleep on her couch when a meteorite came through the roof and hit her, leaving a nasty bruise. The landlady of the house won ownership in court. (Sylacauga, Alabama)