How long ago was this? It wasn't too long ago you could do that. They now block those via the websites, under the pretense that they don't know if it's e911 compatible, and complies with all regulations.
We were a (relativly) new company, so they made us put a $250 deposit just to open a line of service. That may have helped.
Anyhow, the process I went through was this: Went into store, showed copy of flight itenary (to Europe). Cingular store rep called tech support, which placed in a request for escalation. I got an email from Cingular with the code.
Since I really do have nothing in particular to hide, I've even included a copy of the email I received, headers and all.
Yes, it's an HTML email. Yes, it looks ugly. Yes, it was created in Microsoft Word, and the grammar sucks. Don't blame me. The unlock code worked.
The second phone I had unlocked, I again went into the store. This was the day before I had to leave for europe, and was the phone I bought off eBay. They again called Tech Support, and had it escalated. They gave the code over the phone, and I had the instructions for how to use it already.
So, YMMV, but it worked for me for a corporate account with an existing $250 deposit.
In general, the only carrier I haven't been able to get a code from was T-Mobile (never tried with Verizon). For Sprint (at least with treos), you just whine about vision isn't working. Tell them what they try isn't working. At some point, they will tell you do do a vision reset. There are two unlock codes for the phone. The first is a one-time code, and it may have been used activating the phone. The second one is the permanent code. Tell them the first one doesn't work, and they will give you a second one. You now have both.
So, yeah, getting the code on a subsidized phone does occasionally involve some "social engineering" (read lying). They don't know they can collect on an early termination fee. So, buy the phone outright, wait for your contract to expire, use T-Mobile for 3 months, or learn to lie really well.
"Diversify your skillset" is a scam designed to distract people from the fact they are being fucked out of their careers.
And who, exactly, "owes" you a career? Who's fault is it that you are incapable of providing sufficient value to a company to justify the wages you want?
If there is _anything_ that companies can be counted on to do, it's to act in their best interest. If you can provide $70,000 worth of value to a company, it's not too hard to convince them to pay you $40-50K. If you provide $40,000 worth of value to a company, you shouldn't realistically expect them to pay you $50,000, can you? That's not a job, that's charity.
Here's the funny thing about a marketplace - the more of something there is, the less it's worth. All companies have to deal with the fact that the more competition they have, the harder it is to turn a profit, and so do you. People who can do what you do will probably work for cheaper than you. So, you need to either a) provide something the other people can't, b) do something better than the other people, or c) do it for cheaper. That's where diversifying your skillset is necessary. Niches can be really lucrative, but it doesn't take very much competition to make it an unattractive prospect. You can work for what the market price is at, or you can try to do something new or better. You can make a good amount of money doing it, but you can't sit still doing that. Someone else will come in and try to take your piece of the pie.
What's the alternative? Government assigning you a job, and prevent others from doing it? Unions driving up wages to the point where it's higher than what an employee's worth? (Here's a hint, if an employee does a job worth $8/hour to a company, and it costs $10/hour, that employee's getting the axe). Stopping the hiring of illegal aliens and deporting them? Here's a hint - if you think that last one's going to work, you're an idiot.
1) There's too many of them to make it feasable. 2) Their children are often US citizens. You're deporting the parents of American Citizens. 3) If you're worried about your job being taken by someone who can't speak english, and isn't a legal citizen - congratulations, you have a job that requires no skills. 4) If you, for example, deport all the melon pickers, the melons won't get picked (it's happened in Utah and other places). If you pay Americans enough to pick them, the prices go up so high that it's cheaper to ship them from Mexico, where it's still picked by Mexicans, and still results in money getting sent to Mexicans. 5) You lost a whole lot of tax revenue, whether you want to believe it or not. I've hired (and have worked with people who hired) illegal aliens. They all have papers (forged ones are easy to get), and they have taxes withholded just like you or I. Unlike you or I, they aren't getting a refund.
You're welcome to make a case for repealing NAFTA, and revoking lots of people's citizenship, but if we're going to run around revoking citizenship, start with the lazy, good-for-nothing, welfare-abusing americans (not generalizing this to all americans, just refering to that specific segment). The mexicans I've known (and hired) were the hardest working bunch of people I've seen.
So, ok - the system sucks. What do you suggest doing about it? Tarrifs and the like have their own problems, as wealth is built when money _moves_. Stagnant economies are bad.
Oh, you can already do it, if you are willing to spend some time, efford, and/or money.
I bought a T-Mobile MDA yesterday (without a contract). I'm a cingular user.
A few minutes on xda-developers, and I had a utility to remove the SIM lock, and the CID (bootloader) lock. Flashed the cingular firmware on it, and I was good to go.
I also unlocked my cingular treos (one I got from ebay), and flashed them with a customized version of the generic GSM firmware. No annoying carrier customizations, and I had a rock-solid, unlocked phone.
T-Mobile and Cingular don't lock their SIMs, so you are free to use any compatible phone you can get. Their phones can almost all be unlocked, and if you don't take the $150 subsidy in exchange for the phone, they will give you the unlock code. T-Mobile will give you the code on a subsidized phone after 3 months; I had no problem getting Cingular to give me unlock codes the day after activation (that was a business acct, FWIW).
You want beligerant, try Verizon. I had terminated the contract (and paid the fee to cover the subsidy) with Sprint, and had a free CDMA phone, which supported E911 and all other required technology. I flashed it with the stock Verizon firmware. It had Verizon firmware, settings, the works. They still wouldn't take it. Verizon will not take phones they didn't sell.
Sprint had no problem activating a ex-verizon phone for me, however. Go figure.
This is probably going to come off as "flippant" to you, but I'm genuinely curious. I'm a programmer as well, with a number of languages. I did the 80-100 hour (no overtime, of course) wage slave number, and finally quit because it was intolerable. Man can not live on Powerade and Hot Pockets alone (I tried).
If you know 8 languages (presumably fairly well, that's about the number I'm at, depending on how you count the C derivitives), why don't you go into business for yourself. I realize it's the new mantra for why crappy work conditions are OK ("... but you could start a company..."), but in all seriousness, why not?
I finally sat down and realized a number of things. First off, what I really do is solve problems with computers. The language sometimes matters when interoperating with other people's code, but for the most type it's the solution that's important. Two, for every problem I solve, someone else has the same (or a very similar) problem. Three, software (and other IP) is the one industry where the cost of production beyond the first unit is effectivly _zero_. So, given that everyone has problems, there is a large opportunity available to someone who can solve problems (as opposed to the aforemention rat lying cheat salad-bar orderer, who just hires developers to do it for him).
Write the software once, for a client. Do it at a decent discount, in exchange for retaining ownership of the code. When you are producing "solutions", rather than "products", the companies are a lot more willing to do so (at least in my experience). They'd rather save the money. Sell it again, and again. Every new job you do increases the number of products you have to sell (and gives you flexibility to combine projects for even more functionality).
Now the downside to this is that you are, in fact, competing with some guys from third-world nations, who will work for very cheap rates. You can't beat them on price, and you wouldn't want to, at least not on the first sale. So, to compete, you will need to offer something that they can't, or won't. After you sell the first copy of a project, you can cut prices to below the cost of production. If the indians haven't already made one of whatever it is, they can't beat you on price.
I know this works, because it's what I do. I earn American level wages, despite very heavy competition from overseas and my peers. I offer what they can't - personal service, a sales department (me) that speaks English, an extensive code library. I usually have a functional demo of whatever it is they are looking for. This is easy to do; I found out people who need my products beforehand, and I approach them. My products also often include features (Search Engine Manipulation, intrusion detection, very effective caching with good scalability) that the Indians simply can't provide.
In other words, I provide the product my customers need, from an American, better, faster, and cheaper than people in third world companiess can (unless they too wrote whatever it is I'm selling). It's not a hard sale to make. I've carved out my niche (search engine manipulation, cloaking, crawling sites that don't want to be crawled, etc.), and it does well. If it dries up, people will still have problems. I can adapt.
So, the questions I have are: 1) If you can program well, why don't you choose to work for yourself? Uninsurable (too fat/diabetes)? Too much risk (as opposed to a job you get fired from in 6 months anyway)? Couldn't manage to sell $0.50 gas to a Hummer owner?
2) If you do feel it necessary to work for someone else, why don't you diversify your skillset (I never had a shortage of job offers as a Unix Admin who could program, even if the jobs were long hours. The pay was decent, too.), or move. For a "HTML Programmer", there aren't too many jobs since the bust, but for a competant person, there are plenty of jobs, at least where I live. Somehow, I doubt that Mesa, Arizona is the only place in the country where a competant programmer can find work.
Actually, I suspect the grandparent is remembering is most likely when Nvidia had special detection for 3dmark03.exe. Doing optimizations by filename isn't _necessarily_ evil, provided that it's disclosed, done to correct things in the game that could have been done better on your hardware, and doesn't degrade the quality of the output.
For example, if Game X were drawing water a specific way, and nVidia cards could render the exact same water more quickly using a different way while retaining the same quality, it wouldn't be unreasonable for nVidia to include such an optimization. This should, however, be disclosed, so that reviewers can test with (more representative of what a user can expect), or without (testing the raw hardware) this optimization.
Detecting a synthetic benchmark is just cheating, and they were actually lowering the quality of the output as well. It wasn't even an "this could be done better this way" type of tweak.
It depends on the Cinema. At the AMCs around here, the policy is no hot/aromatic foods. At the nearby Harkins, their policy seems "not allowed, but we don't enforce it".
I went to a Cinemark in Utah - they wouldn't allow me to bring in my cup of water, even when I pointed out that I'd just get 6 curteousy cups of water from them instead.
I've been there, and there are most definatly times when fighting is necessary.
During High School, I was in the sum total of 2 fights. Both were with people I dealt with on a regular basis. I'm rather skinny, and as the resident "computer geek", people figured I was on the weak side. I'm also 6'10" (not too big a secret), and have a 720 pound leg press (you can't tell by looking).
The first issue I had was with a wrestler in choir class (don't ask). He kept hounding me, harassing me verbally, and after a couple of months, I was tired of it. I informed him that if he did not stop, I would throw him headfirst in the large garbage can nearby. He didn't stop, I kept my promise, and he left me alone after that.
The second case involved a guy on the JV football team. We had known each other for years, and he felt that I was "full of it", in that I refused to put up with the crap he would try to do to me. One night, he finally had two of his friends holding my arms behind my back while he was going to headbutt me (cliché, but accurate). I kicked him in in the gut, wrestled free of the two guys holding my arms behind me, and held him in a headlock until he nearly passed out (long arms provide plenty of leverage, and because of the height differences, he could only elbow me in the hips). Took 4 people to seperate us. We actually got along fine after that, and it seemed to be that he respected that I didn't put up with his crap simply because I didn't need to.
Does 2 fights in High School make me a violent person? Perhaps. In both cases, history showed that had I not dealt with the issue, and simply ran away, or tried to avoid it, it would have continued. If nothing else, "leave me alone or I beat the crap out of you" provides a decent deterrant if the other guy is unarmed.
Sure you can. You can charge $100 for the source, and $150 for a binary (compiled) version if you want, you just have to give the source for free to anyone who you give a binary version to.
You can sell the source by itself, too. $100 for the source code, no binaries provided at any price.
It runs most PalmOS apps just fine, comes with the USB cable standard, and can be used as a bluetooth modem. It's 320x320 screen is good enough to run an SSH client on, and with small fonts can even run some ncurses apps.
It's not huge or 10 pounds, unlike a lot of those windows smartphones, and it's not crippled to only run signed applications either. It's also shaped like a phone, not an eraser or brick.
The problem with restricting arbitrary binaries is that it makes it too easy to add data restrictions in the form of a mandatory, required to play file X "update".
As a sort of "control", I had a couple of my friends take it. They all got "Your results indicate that it is unlikely that you have adult ADD." - it's not like those horoscopes that apply to 99% of people out there.
The theater I used to work at actually did something along those lines. When a new movie came out (something teenagers and adults would see, like White Noise), they would show the movie in two theaters at the same time.
When you came up to buy a ticket, you were sorted based on how you looked and acted (oh no, discrimination!)
In one theater went unaccompanied teenagers, adults with really small children, people who couldn't get off their cellphone to buy a ticket, etc.
In the other theater went people who looked like they could be trusted to be quiet in a movie.
We had someone at the theater doors checking ticket stubs to make sure people didn't switch theaters and the like, as well as people in the theaters themselves. In the noisy people theater, we had a police officer, and several employees, and we managed to keep it down to a decent level. People were sending text messages back and forth, and whispering, but absolute quiet simply wasn't a possibility without removing half the theater. Excessive talking, taking phone calls, etc. got a warning, followed by removal from the theater.
In the second theater, we had a single employee, and announced a zero tolerance policy beforehand. You talk, you leave. Anyone who wanted to join the noisy theater was welcome to do so. Also, anyone who complained about the noise level in the other theater got a free readmit pass, and was issued a ticket in the "quiet" theater.
All in all, it worked out well. We had only a few complaints from the noisy theater, and a whole bunch of people saying "thank you" for being able to sit back and watch the movie in peace. Some people simply won't be quiet, so it makes a certain amount of sense to shove them all in their own theater. They don't seem to bug each other, so it all works out in the end.
Sadly, we couldn't do this for every showing, or even every movie. Movies like spongebob simply aren't going to be quiet no matter how hard you try. Also, I found keeping quiet (opening night) in movies like "Diary of a Mad Black Woman" to be impossible. First, it would have been necessary to remove a good chunk of the (largely adult) audience; second, I didn't want to be the lone white employee removing the aforementioned chunk of the (largely black) audience. I don't care one way or the other about race; however, the management really hated it when anything got escalated to Corporate, and that sounded like a good way get something escalated.
There is a legal thoery (similar to the original EULA theory) that goes as follows:
When you run and install a program, you make copies in RAM and on the hard disk. This requires a license from the copyright holder. A license grant from the seller can reasonably be implied from the purchase, as selling unusable copies doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
In the United States, USC Title 17, Chapter 1, 117 makes specific exceptions for copies needed to run or install a program (this really hurts the case for the need for EULAs); however, the exemption only applies to "the owner of a copy of a computer program".
Now, companies make the case that it is not, in fact, a sale, but rather simply a license. This is the same argument that was used in Adobe vs. Softman, and was rejected.
So, through the wonders of copyright law, it is in fact the purchase of the software that grants you the right to use it (or, more specifically, prevents copyright law from taking away your right to do with your own posessions as you see fit).
Nice to see someone that hates EULAs nearly as much as me:)
I'm on a team that does a little media player (TCPMP), and we're building a commercial version of the player to go along with our Free (in price and freedom) player. My contribution to the EULA:
TCPMP is distributed without a license. Purchasing this software has given you the right to run it; no "permission" from us is needed. Note: The above statement does not mean you can do anything you want with this software; Copyright law typically prohibits the making and distribution of copies without the authorization of the copyright holder.
True, easy to understand, and no scary "we own your soul" type stuff. We're not even going to cripple the GPL version to go commercial, either. It's almost enough to make me wonder if we're a real software company, after all.:)
Hey, I'm 6'10", and I haul a bunch of kids around. I happen to like my big, fuel guzzling, small-car-crushing vechicle, namely because it's one of the only vehicles I fit in. If you don't like people driving bigger vehicles than you, get a bigger vehicle yourself. Why should others have to change their behavior to suit you?
I've been comparing some of the differences between the chinese version and the US one.
Take a look at the Google US search for "Tiawanese Independence. Note that the first result is the Tiawanese Independence Party, and #2 describes how Bush Opposes it.
Now, let's take a look at the french site, to see if the results are similar - "Taiwanese Independence". Very similar results.
Let's try this on.cn: "Taiwanese Independence". Note that the Independence Party is completly gone from the results. Guess they are subversive.
Far more insidious than actually banning certain searches is manipulating the results themselves to tout the party line. Leave a few fringe sites up, so you don't appear to completly control things, but remove any site you consider to truly be a threat. After all, they are doubleplus ungood.
It would most likely require some specialized software on the client PC. For one thing, the FAT, last modified times, etc. would have to be in an area set as "safe".
Also, windows likes to build thumbnails, summaries, etc. for files it sees. This is done by reading the file in question (or at least parts) - if you had, for example, a.jpg file, the second you opened that folder, Windows would read it to make a thumbnail (and it would be deleted instantly). That would make it a write once, read never device.
Not particularly useful without the software to back it up.
I drove from Los Angeles, California to Houston, Texas last week - large areas were 75MPH, with few people in site. Much of that trip was made between 84 and 89 miles per hour, depending on if it was a "Safety Corridor" (fines doubled) or the like. Also, much of the time, the only things I could hit were deer, or perhaps a tree or two.
What was scary was some of the small, winding roads in Houston that were 50 MPH, sometimes with houses on them. I'd rather have people doing 85 on the highway than 50 on a poorly maintained winding road. I didn't feel safe going much over 35 on some of them.
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How long ago was this? It wasn't too long ago you could do that. They now block those via the websites, under the pretense that they don't know if it's e911 compatible, and complies with all regulations.
We were a (relativly) new company, so they made us put a $250 deposit just to open a line of service. That may have helped.
Anyhow, the process I went through was this:
Went into store, showed copy of flight itenary (to Europe).
Cingular store rep called tech support, which placed in a request for escalation.
I got an email from Cingular with the code.
Since I really do have nothing in particular to hide, I've even included a copy of the email I received, headers and all.
Yes, it's an HTML email. Yes, it looks ugly. Yes, it was created in Microsoft Word, and the grammar sucks. Don't blame me. The unlock code worked.
Here it is.
The second phone I had unlocked, I again went into the store. This was the day before I had to leave for europe, and was the phone I bought off eBay. They again called Tech Support, and had it escalated. They gave the code over the phone, and I had the instructions for how to use it already.
So, YMMV, but it worked for me for a corporate account with an existing $250 deposit.
In general, the only carrier I haven't been able to get a code from was T-Mobile (never tried with Verizon). For Sprint (at least with treos), you just whine about vision isn't working. Tell them what they try isn't working. At some point, they will tell you do do a vision reset. There are two unlock codes for the phone. The first is a one-time code, and it may have been used activating the phone. The second one is the permanent code. Tell them the first one doesn't work, and they will give you a second one. You now have both.
So, yeah, getting the code on a subsidized phone does occasionally involve some "social engineering" (read lying). They don't know they can collect on an early termination fee. So, buy the phone outright, wait for your contract to expire, use T-Mobile for 3 months, or learn to lie really well.
Can you tell the difference on a notebook screen?
Depends - mine's 1920x1200, so you can definatly tell the difference between a (good) HDTV source, and a regular DVD.
"Diversify your skillset" is a scam designed to distract people from the fact they are being fucked out of their careers.
And who, exactly, "owes" you a career? Who's fault is it that you are incapable of providing sufficient value to a company to justify the wages you want?
If there is _anything_ that companies can be counted on to do, it's to act in their best interest. If you can provide $70,000 worth of value to a company, it's not too hard to convince them to pay you $40-50K. If you provide $40,000 worth of value to a company, you shouldn't realistically expect them to pay you $50,000, can you? That's not a job, that's charity.
Here's the funny thing about a marketplace - the more of something there is, the less it's worth. All companies have to deal with the fact that the more competition they have, the harder it is to turn a profit, and so do you. People who can do what you do will probably work for cheaper than you. So, you need to either a) provide something the other people can't, b) do something better than the other people, or c) do it for cheaper. That's where diversifying your skillset is necessary. Niches can be really lucrative, but it doesn't take very much competition to make it an unattractive prospect. You can work for what the market price is at, or you can try to do something new or better. You can make a good amount of money doing it, but you can't sit still doing that. Someone else will come in and try to take your piece of the pie.
What's the alternative? Government assigning you a job, and prevent others from doing it? Unions driving up wages to the point where it's higher than what an employee's worth? (Here's a hint, if an employee does a job worth $8/hour to a company, and it costs $10/hour, that employee's getting the axe). Stopping the hiring of illegal aliens and deporting them? Here's a hint - if you think that last one's going to work, you're an idiot.
1) There's too many of them to make it feasable.
2) Their children are often US citizens. You're deporting the parents of American Citizens.
3) If you're worried about your job being taken by someone who can't speak english, and isn't a legal citizen - congratulations, you have a job that requires no skills.
4) If you, for example, deport all the melon pickers, the melons won't get picked (it's happened in Utah and other places). If you pay Americans enough to pick them, the prices go up so high that it's cheaper to ship them from Mexico, where it's still picked by Mexicans, and still results in money getting sent to Mexicans.
5) You lost a whole lot of tax revenue, whether you want to believe it or not. I've hired (and have worked with people who hired) illegal aliens. They all have papers (forged ones are easy to get), and they have taxes withholded just like you or I. Unlike you or I, they aren't getting a refund.
You're welcome to make a case for repealing NAFTA, and revoking lots of people's citizenship, but if we're going to run around revoking citizenship, start with the lazy, good-for-nothing, welfare-abusing americans (not generalizing this to all americans, just refering to that specific segment). The mexicans I've known (and hired) were the hardest working bunch of people I've seen.
So, ok - the system sucks. What do you suggest doing about it? Tarrifs and the like have their own problems, as wealth is built when money _moves_. Stagnant economies are bad.
Oh, you can already do it, if you are willing to spend some time, efford, and/or money.
I bought a T-Mobile MDA yesterday (without a contract). I'm a cingular user.
A few minutes on xda-developers, and I had a utility to remove the SIM lock, and the CID (bootloader) lock. Flashed the cingular firmware on it, and I was good to go.
I also unlocked my cingular treos (one I got from ebay), and flashed them with a customized version of the generic GSM firmware. No annoying carrier customizations, and I had a rock-solid, unlocked phone.
T-Mobile and Cingular don't lock their SIMs, so you are free to use any compatible phone you can get. Their phones can almost all be unlocked, and if you don't take the $150 subsidy in exchange for the phone, they will give you the unlock code. T-Mobile will give you the code on a subsidized phone after 3 months; I had no problem getting Cingular to give me unlock codes the day after activation (that was a business acct, FWIW).
You want beligerant, try Verizon. I had terminated the contract (and paid the fee to cover the subsidy) with Sprint, and had a free CDMA phone, which supported E911 and all other required technology. I flashed it with the stock Verizon firmware. It had Verizon firmware, settings, the works. They still wouldn't take it. Verizon will not take phones they didn't sell.
Sprint had no problem activating a ex-verizon phone for me, however. Go figure.
This is probably going to come off as "flippant" to you, but I'm genuinely curious. I'm a programmer as well, with a number of languages. I did the 80-100 hour (no overtime, of course) wage slave number, and finally quit because it was intolerable. Man can not live on Powerade and Hot Pockets alone (I tried).
If you know 8 languages (presumably fairly well, that's about the number I'm at, depending on how you count the C derivitives), why don't you go into business for yourself. I realize it's the new mantra for why crappy work conditions are OK ("... but you could start a company..."), but in all seriousness, why not?
I finally sat down and realized a number of things. First off, what I really do is solve problems with computers. The language sometimes matters when interoperating with other people's code, but for the most type it's the solution that's important. Two, for every problem I solve, someone else has the same (or a very similar) problem. Three, software (and other IP) is the one industry where the cost of production beyond the first unit is effectivly _zero_. So, given that everyone has problems, there is a large opportunity available to someone who can solve problems (as opposed to the aforemention rat lying cheat salad-bar orderer, who just hires developers to do it for him).
Write the software once, for a client. Do it at a decent discount, in exchange for retaining ownership of the code. When you are producing "solutions", rather than "products", the companies are a lot more willing to do so (at least in my experience). They'd rather save the money. Sell it again, and again. Every new job you do increases the number of products you have to sell (and gives you flexibility to combine projects for even more functionality).
Now the downside to this is that you are, in fact, competing with some guys from third-world nations, who will work for very cheap rates. You can't beat them on price, and you wouldn't want to, at least not on the first sale. So, to compete, you will need to offer something that they can't, or won't. After you sell the first copy of a project, you can cut prices to below the cost of production. If the indians haven't already made one of whatever it is, they can't beat you on price.
I know this works, because it's what I do. I earn American level wages, despite very heavy competition from overseas and my peers. I offer what they can't - personal service, a sales department (me) that speaks English, an extensive code library. I usually have a functional demo of whatever it is they are looking for. This is easy to do; I found out people who need my products beforehand, and I approach them. My products also often include features (Search Engine Manipulation, intrusion detection, very effective caching with good scalability) that the Indians simply can't provide.
In other words, I provide the product my customers need, from an American, better, faster, and cheaper than people in third world companiess can (unless they too wrote whatever it is I'm selling). It's not a hard sale to make. I've carved out my niche (search engine manipulation, cloaking, crawling sites that don't want to be crawled, etc.), and it does well. If it dries up, people will still have problems. I can adapt.
So, the questions I have are:
1) If you can program well, why don't you choose to work for yourself? Uninsurable (too fat/diabetes)? Too much risk (as opposed to a job you get fired from in 6 months anyway)? Couldn't manage to sell $0.50 gas to a Hummer owner?
2) If you do feel it necessary to work for someone else, why don't you diversify your skillset (I never had a shortage of job offers as a Unix Admin who could program, even if the jobs were long hours. The pay was decent, too.), or move. For a "HTML Programmer", there aren't too many jobs since the bust, but for a competant person, there are plenty of jobs, at least where I live. Somehow, I doubt that Mesa, Arizona is the only place in the country where a competant programmer can find work.
Actually, I suspect the grandparent is remembering is most likely when Nvidia had special detection for 3dmark03.exe. Doing optimizations by filename isn't _necessarily_ evil, provided that it's disclosed, done to correct things in the game that could have been done better on your hardware, and doesn't degrade the quality of the output.
For example, if Game X were drawing water a specific way, and nVidia cards could render the exact same water more quickly using a different way while retaining the same quality, it wouldn't be unreasonable for nVidia to include such an optimization. This should, however, be disclosed, so that reviewers can test with (more representative of what a user can expect), or without (testing the raw hardware) this optimization.
Detecting a synthetic benchmark is just cheating, and they were actually lowering the quality of the output as well. It wasn't even an "this could be done better this way" type of tweak.
It depends on the Cinema. At the AMCs around here, the policy is no hot/aromatic foods. At the nearby Harkins, their policy seems "not allowed, but we don't enforce it".
I went to a Cinemark in Utah - they wouldn't allow me to bring in my cup of water, even when I pointed out that I'd just get 6 curteousy cups of water from them instead.
I've been there, and there are most definatly times when fighting is necessary.
During High School, I was in the sum total of 2 fights. Both were with people I dealt with on a regular basis. I'm rather skinny, and as the resident "computer geek", people figured I was on the weak side. I'm also 6'10" (not too big a secret), and have a 720 pound leg press (you can't tell by looking).
The first issue I had was with a wrestler in choir class (don't ask). He kept hounding me, harassing me verbally, and after a couple of months, I was tired of it. I informed him that if he did not stop, I would throw him headfirst in the large garbage can nearby. He didn't stop, I kept my promise, and he left me alone after that.
The second case involved a guy on the JV football team. We had known each other for years, and he felt that I was "full of it", in that I refused to put up with the crap he would try to do to me. One night, he finally had two of his friends holding my arms behind my back while he was going to headbutt me (cliché, but accurate). I kicked him in in the gut, wrestled free of the two guys holding my arms behind me, and held him in a headlock until he nearly passed out (long arms provide plenty of leverage, and because of the height differences, he could only elbow me in the hips). Took 4 people to seperate us. We actually got along fine after that, and it seemed to be that he respected that I didn't put up with his crap simply because I didn't need to.
Does 2 fights in High School make me a violent person? Perhaps. In both cases, history showed that had I not dealt with the issue, and simply ran away, or tried to avoid it, it would have continued. If nothing else, "leave me alone or I beat the crap out of you" provides a decent deterrant if the other guy is unarmed.
> You just may not sell the source.
Sure you can. You can charge $100 for the source, and $150 for a binary (compiled) version if you want, you just have to give the source for free to anyone who you give a binary version to.
You can sell the source by itself, too. $100 for the source code, no binaries provided at any price.
Let me guess, you use TCPMP?
:)
The CE devices using TCPMP can drop 0 frames, too.
There's always the Treo 650.
It runs most PalmOS apps just fine, comes with the USB cable standard, and can be used as a bluetooth modem. It's 320x320 screen is good enough to run an SSH client on, and with small fonts can even run some ncurses apps.
It's not huge or 10 pounds, unlike a lot of those windows smartphones, and it's not crippled to only run signed applications either. It's also shaped like a phone, not an eraser or brick.
The biggest downside seems to be the price.
The problem with restricting arbitrary binaries is that it makes it too easy to add data restrictions in the form of a mandatory, required to play file X "update".
Wow - I nailed 19 of them. Ouch.
What do you get on This One?
As a sort of "control", I had a couple of my friends take it. They all got "Your results indicate that it is unlikely that you have adult ADD." - it's not like those horoscopes that apply to 99% of people out there.
The theater I used to work at actually did something along those lines. When a new movie came out (something teenagers and adults would see, like White Noise), they would show the movie in two theaters at the same time.
When you came up to buy a ticket, you were sorted based on how you looked and acted (oh no, discrimination!)
In one theater went unaccompanied teenagers, adults with really small children, people who couldn't get off their cellphone to buy a ticket, etc.
In the other theater went people who looked like they could be trusted to be quiet in a movie.
We had someone at the theater doors checking ticket stubs to make sure people didn't switch theaters and the like, as well as people in the theaters themselves. In the noisy people theater, we had a police officer, and several employees, and we managed to keep it down to a decent level. People were sending text messages back and forth, and whispering, but absolute quiet simply wasn't a possibility without removing half the theater. Excessive talking, taking phone calls, etc. got a warning, followed by removal from the theater.
In the second theater, we had a single employee, and announced a zero tolerance policy beforehand. You talk, you leave. Anyone who wanted to join the noisy theater was welcome to do so. Also, anyone who complained about the noise level in the other theater got a free readmit pass, and was issued a ticket in the "quiet" theater.
All in all, it worked out well. We had only a few complaints from the noisy theater, and a whole bunch of people saying "thank you" for being able to sit back and watch the movie in peace. Some people simply won't be quiet, so it makes a certain amount of sense to shove them all in their own theater. They don't seem to bug each other, so it all works out in the end.
Sadly, we couldn't do this for every showing, or even every movie. Movies like spongebob simply aren't going to be quiet no matter how hard you try. Also, I found keeping quiet (opening night) in movies like "Diary of a Mad Black Woman" to be impossible. First, it would have been necessary to remove a good chunk of the (largely adult) audience; second, I didn't want to be the lone white employee removing the aforementioned chunk of the (largely black) audience. I don't care one way or the other about race; however, the management really hated it when anything got escalated to Corporate, and that sounded like a good way get something escalated.
There is a legal thoery (similar to the original EULA theory) that goes as follows:
When you run and install a program, you make copies in RAM and on the hard disk. This requires a license from the copyright holder. A license grant from the seller can reasonably be implied from the purchase, as selling unusable copies doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
In the United States, USC Title 17, Chapter 1, 117 makes specific exceptions for copies needed to run or install a program (this really hurts the case for the need for EULAs); however, the exemption only applies to "the owner of a copy of a computer program".
Now, companies make the case that it is not, in fact, a sale, but rather simply a license. This is the same argument that was used in Adobe vs. Softman, and was rejected.
So, through the wonders of copyright law, it is in fact the purchase of the software that grants you the right to use it (or, more specifically, prevents copyright law from taking away your right to do with your own posessions as you see fit).
Nice to see someone that hates EULAs nearly as much as me :)
:)
I'm on a team that does a little media player (TCPMP), and we're building a commercial version of the player to go along with our Free (in price and freedom) player. My contribution to the EULA:
TCPMP is distributed without a license. Purchasing this software has given you the right to run it; no "permission" from us is needed.
Note: The above statement does not mean you can do anything you want with this software; Copyright law typically prohibits the making and distribution of copies without the authorization of the copyright holder.
True, easy to understand, and no scary "we own your soul" type stuff. We're not even going to cripple the GPL version to go commercial, either. It's almost enough to make me wonder if we're a real software company, after all.
Hey, I'm 6'10", and I haul a bunch of kids around. I happen to like my big, fuel guzzling, small-car-crushing vechicle, namely because it's one of the only vehicles I fit in. If you don't like people driving bigger vehicles than you, get a bigger vehicle yourself. Why should others have to change their behavior to suit you?
For people in the US, that's not necessarily the case.
I've been comparing some of the differences between the chinese version and the US one.
.cn: "Taiwanese Independence". Note that the Independence Party is completly gone from the results. Guess they are subversive.
Take a look at the Google US search for "Tiawanese Independence. Note that the first result is the Tiawanese Independence Party, and #2 describes how Bush Opposes it.
Now, let's take a look at the french site, to see if the results are similar - "Taiwanese Independence". Very similar results.
Let's try this on
Far more insidious than actually banning certain searches is manipulating the results themselves to tout the party line. Leave a few fringe sites up, so you don't appear to completly control things, but remove any site you consider to truly be a threat. After all, they are doubleplus ungood.
I believe that at LA, it's only United that enforces it.
Depends on the airport - I've had them refuse me when I try that at LAX; however, most other airports are fine.
o rial_1046.xml
The "official" list is at http://www.tsa.gov/public/interapp/editorial/edit
It would most likely require some specialized software on the client PC. For one thing, the FAT, last modified times, etc. would have to be in an area set as "safe".
.jpg file, the second you opened that folder, Windows would read it to make a thumbnail (and it would be deleted instantly). That would make it a write once, read never device.
Also, windows likes to build thumbnails, summaries, etc. for files it sees. This is done by reading the file in question (or at least parts) - if you had, for example, a
Not particularly useful without the software to back it up.
Actually, I got a talking popup ad earlier today - it used flash.
I drove from Los Angeles, California to Houston, Texas last week - large areas were 75MPH, with few people in site. Much of that trip was made between 84 and 89 miles per hour, depending on if it was a "Safety Corridor" (fines doubled) or the like. Also, much of the time, the only things I could hit were deer, or perhaps a tree or two.
What was scary was some of the small, winding roads in Houston that were 50 MPH, sometimes with houses on them. I'd rather have people doing 85 on the highway than 50 on a poorly maintained winding road. I didn't feel safe going much over 35 on some of them.