Those BarStewards spend a lot of time and energy looking for ways to get past our spam filters. They know we don't want their stuff but they insist on subjecting us to it.
I used to work in the marketing department of our company (it was decided that the website was essentially the marketing arm of the service, so I was put in marketing to make it easier for them to get me to do stuff for them without having to go through the VP of IT...I've mercifully been put back in IT), and in my experience, they don't actually realize that.
More than once, I was asked how to avoid spam filters, since I was known as one of the people at the company who did a lot of work trying to filter my own spam. They said something very similar to "They don't know that they don't want to see our ads! These people don't know what they're missing, and they'll be happy to hear what we've got to offer!"
Combine that with what Scott Richter said on the Daily Show, and I think all spammers are essentially delusional. They honestly believe that their offer is so fantastic that they don't understand why someone *wouldn't* want to see it. They honestly believe that they're doing you a favor by evading your spam filter, that filter you put in place to get *everyone but them*, so that they can make your life better.
It's scary as hell, because, at least at my company, the delusion was definitely real. It made it nearly impossible to convince them to not use, as they put it, "e-mail based marketing", because they truly believe that everyone loves them.
I'm with you, a baseball bat is a good option. However, until spamming becomes not a financial windfall (our company was paying out $40-$60 a customer brought in by spam...considering how cheap it is to send, it's no wonder some people spam), people will keep doing it. We have to find out how to make spamming actually cost money if we really want it to end, or at least lessen.
Generally, when you've got a car at the limit of adhesion, you're already turning the wheel to just the right amount for the angle you're going for, and you're near 100% of your tires' adhesion. At that point, turning the wheel more to turn sharper will just drive the front tires over 100%, making them wash out, you can actually turn *less* by turning the wheel farther into the turn because the tires break adhesion and start skidding, generally losing about 30% of their grip (if my memory of the Skip Barber lessons is correct).
Once you're at the limit, the steering wheel should be kept relatively steady through the corner, but the throttle and brake should be used to adjust the car's attitude. Get out of the throttle a bit to get the car to turn in sharper, get back into it harder to get the car to turn shallower. By shifting the weight forwards and backwards on the chassis, you're shifting the amount of traction between each set of wheels, and the car will react accordingly.
Similarly, when heading into a turn, there's a limit to the point where the steering wheel is effective, and if you want to improve your car's ability to turn in, give it just partial braking to shift weight to the front of the car.
The thing is, you're always going to turn the wheel to the optimum point for any given corner, and when you're right up at about 100% of the tires' traction, the only thing that will make any difference in the radius of the turn at that point is shifting weight between the fronts and the rears, and you do that via the throttle and brake.
I highly recommend "Going Faster! The Art of Race Driving" from the Skip Barber Racing School if you want to get a little more into that. The Gran Turismo 3 manual had a bit from that book, but it's no substitute for the book, just like simming is no substitute for the real thing.
I would imagine that, at this point, the vast majority of people buying it on Steam have already pre-loaded the game, as I had. I had the entire thing downloaded over a week ago, just sitting and waiting to be unlocked with what appeared to be only downloading some keys for decrypting, not any real content. The rest of them probably bought it retail, so they already have all of the files necessary, they just have to get the keys as well.
The only one that's getting me is that I didn't realize that I had to download HL1:Source as well, so now I've got that coming down. It seems to be handling it quite well.
I'm pretty certain, especially given the complete lack of activity on my Steam Monitor during the unlocking process, that once the unlock starts, it's not going over the network. It's just the process of decrypting the game files, and that's wholly processor dependent. I literally saw no traffic between my computer and Steam during the unlock process, but I had a hell of a lot of hard drive activity.
I think that's the reason reinstall is in "quotes", because users thought they were reinstalling it rather than just executing it without an icon. It's be awfully nice if I could actually install it, but I can't say that I've missed it. Now, if only I could remember how to get all my Windows Update stuff without IE, I'd be able to hide that thing forever...there's no way to take off an execute bit on it, is there?
This seems obvious to me, but somehow I doubt that Counter Strike teaches anyone how to kill more effectively than one would intuitively know given how a gun works.
I honestly don't see it being more effective to zigzag back and forth blasting wildly, all while screaming "CAMPING FAGORT!11!eleven!!", and bitching about AWPs than any non-CS player could be.
Back a little more on subject, I play a LOT of racing sims. They can teach a lot of the fundamentals. You learn things like the proper line around a track, how to use the throttle and brake to steer rather than relying on the steering wheel, etc etc. I do think it helps. However, it's no substitute for the real thing. That also, IMHO, applies in cases like this. You can learn some fundamentals like how to communicate and work in a group (as long as you're on a private server, good luck on a public one) and that taking the time to line up your shot is more effective than spraying like an idiot, but it's still not going to help you any more than a basic lesson on gun usage will, and certainly not going to make you an expert marksman or anything.
I actually have to go with the parent poster, because the vast majority of big-time spammers and the like use every method of tracking available to them. After being condemned to a marketing department at a.com for a couple of years, I learned all about conversion rates, bounties, etc etc. Spammers make their money more often these days via conversions, not eyeballs, so they track how many people actually sign up off a given e-mail.
The sad part is, it takes far less than 1% of spam victims to respond for the spammer to make money. It costs nearly nothing to send it, and some companies will pay upwards of $50 per conversion. Send it to a million people, 0.1% convert, that's $50K. Chances are, it cost a LOT less than $50K to blast 1 million e-mails out.
What is even sadder to me is that I think most people who actually convert on these things have probably willingly signed up for those "great deal offer bonus!" email lists. I don't think doing something with confirmed opt-in and the like would actually really hurt their business, those who demand not to be on the list won't buy anything from you anyway, merely on principle. When I get a spam about something I actually want, I generally won't buy the product at all anymore. It strikes me as a win-win situation: The spammer doesn't have to send as many emails, will still get about the same number of respondents, and the rest of us can live in peace.
Suffice it to say, I am no longer part of a marketing department, and for that I am eternally grateful.
The problem is, it's questionable as to whether or not he did break the law. He didn't break any of the specific laws, like saying the seven dirty words, he broke those same laws that define whether something is "art or pornography". It supposedly violated community standards, and was therefore indecent, though somehow it is not indecent when Oprah does it. I think his Loveline argument is flawed as the show, at least here on the west coast, airs from 10pm to midnight, which is in safe harbor.
I think a much more valid argument in his favor is that "community standards" should be dictated by the market. If it's so wildly offensive and indecent to the vast majority of the people listening to it, his ratings will suck and his show will go off the air. Given that he still has pretty good ratings, I think it's reasonable to conclude that a large portion of the American public don't consider his show obscene.
You obviously do not listen to the show (your previous posts about "accidentally stumbling on it" earlier notwithstanding). He doesn't say "f*ck", in fact, he doesn't say any of the seven dirty words, bleeps out callers who do say it, and generally yells at them until they stop doing it.
He follows all the concrete obscenity rules to the letter. The incidents in question all revolve around situations where he said things that were deemed to be indecent by "community standards", nothing that was clearly delineated as indecent or not.
The incident that caused Clear Channel to pull out was over a guy who was on the show talking about something involving anal sex. Recently, Oprah had a guest on who talked about that subject at length, and it regularly is a topic of conversation on Loveline, hence Stern's claim of a double-standard, where he's fined but neither Oprah nor Loveline are.
Yes, the show does go for shock value. However, it also has intelligent conversations. It's also often quite funny. And he doesn't say "f*ck". When I want just straight intelligent conversation, I listen to NPR instead (which I often do). The cool thing is, I have a choice as to which I like to listen to on any given morning. If I feel like laughing, I'll listen to Stern, otherwise I'll listen to NPR.
In the end, though, you're busy accusing Stern of doing things he doesn't do in order to make your point, however you don't listen to his show. I don't bash Rush Limbaugh's show because I don't listen to it...I don't know what I'm talking about. You might consider doing the same.
This is true (though more accurately, lately Viacom was fined), but the main thing he's been talking about lately is that they want to change it so that individual broadcasters can be fined, not just the company that runs the station. I wish I knew more of the specifics of it, but it's been one of his topics of conversation a lot recently.
Unless he's like some people who look down at their keyboard the whole time and are so used to typing their login and password that they just do it without even looking, then hit enter, only to see that nothing filled out on the page.
Admittedly, I don't think it's a large group, it only applies to people who can't touch type, don't look up at the screen when typing data they type on a regular basis, and use tabs. It's still something that should be fixed though, and I like the guy's idea from earlier: Don't let javascript on a tab execute unless that tab has focus.
Also, wouldn't the person have to hit enter to have the data even be passed to the exploiting site, and would that even work, or would the entry form grab focus instead of passing it off to the entry form's submit button? For the second exploit, wouldn't it not do anything useful at all if the user typed everything in, then used the mouse to click the submit button?
"The Daily Show tapes every Monday through Thursday at the Daily Show studios, located at 513 West 54th Street, New York City. Doors open at 5:45 PM. Audience members must be 18 or over to attend (tickets are required for attendance)." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Show
If you can't seem to gather a clue on your own, perhaps you can find somewhere to purchase one?
I'm wary of blaming on a specific country or people, but there is a point to this, and it all goes back to that old cliche of "you get what you pay for".
Now, this is not to say that you're just going to get a worse product out of someone. I know a number of programmers who have since moved back to India since their H1-Bs went out, and of the ones I had the pleasure to work with, the vast majority are better than most American programmers I know. However, you pay less in exchange for difficulty in communication, time differences, the lack of ability to directly oversee the process without a long flight, etc. While I do not consider myself a rabid capitalist, the reason that labor and the like is higher here in the US is because the returns/expenses involved are better. Eventually the pendulum will swing, too many events like this will happen, and jobs will start heading back to the US.
In the meantime, those who truly *want* to code or whatever for a living will continue to improve themselves and be plenty good enough to hire, and those that did it to get rich will find the next big thing to get rich on. And so it continues.
Six Flags had the same problem with a ride out here in the Los Angeles area called "X". Amazing ride, has seats that rotate independently of the train, so it can do things like flip the seats while going through a long airtime hill. Good stuff.
Unfortunately, it was down a lot. After opening late, it had a 6-month downtime, then was regularly closed, probably at least half of the days since then. When it wasn't, it had 3-4 hour waits.
However, Six Flags never once bothered to put any sort of X Status on their webpages, refused to answer any questions on its status when called, and half the time, didn't even list the ride as closed at the front gates when it was down. Despite living 15 minutes from Six Flags, and being a bit of a coaster nut, I don't really go there anymore...
'Cept that S:TE at Magic Mountain hasn't made it to 100mph since the day it opened, goes up more like 31 stories (they measure the tower from the ground to the top, but the station is already a good 70-80 feet higher than the ground under the tower, due to it being on a hill), and hasn't run for just about the entire year this year.
I do like S:TE, but it can't compare to really any of the major launched coasters since it was built.
Bah, Gemini isn't a wooden coaster! It's got a wooden frame, but them's steel rails on it:)
I made it to Cedar Point last year, but the weather was so bad that essentially nothing was running, and ended up not getting to ride much of anything at all. I've ridden Top Thrill's prototype, Xcelerator at Knott's Berry Farm, and it's absolutely fantastic. One of these days I'll make it out east again and get to play on TTD and Kingda Ka.
However, some of the more scrupulous (did I just say that?) spammers will remove emails that don't seem to ever open those little tracking images and the like before selling them off. Old email addresses *do* eventually lessen their spam load, but they'll never lose it.
In the end, I think his point is that that email is probably less likely to have been picked up by all the more recent spam-related worms and the like, so it shouldn't be viewed in the same light as currently used addresses that potential virus victims might have in their address book. As is, I get many, many bounces sent to my (now retired) work e-mail because business contacts, with that email in their address book, got infected by the multitude of spammer worms.
Same here, I've got a 7th generation Toyota Celica and it's got a digital readout for the odometer. I wonder what they do to protect that....
Ideally, I would imagine with the asymetric gear thing, you could always just roll back the odometer to zero at some point, then try to put the miles back onto it. That wouldn't really work for insurance (unless you rolled it to 0 after every time it was checked, then made it a point to drive more every year than the previous year), but it might work for selling the car.
They had a blurb about this thing, and Progressive's plan to use it, on one of our local news radio stations. They were saying that the time you drive would be a major factor in your insurance premiums. I guess things like this are out of the question for anyone who works odd hours or is on call 24/7 for things that might require a drive to work.
"No, I can't come in and fix the server, it'll cost me a fortune on my car insurance."
Re:Some of the changes (possible spoilers)
on
Star Wars on DVD
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I enjoyed the star wars films, and while I'm not a huge star wars fan, I was most likely going to pick these up.
Then I read the same bit you quoted.
That's crap. They're complaining in the article that they're not the highest forecasted sellers for this holiday season because it's $70, and blaming it on that. Maybe it has something to do with:
a) not releasing the original versions, the ones that everyone really wants to see and b) telling them to pay $70, yet refusing to tell them what they're actually getting, so they can "check them out for themselves."
When I buy a DVD, I damn well want to know what I'm getting. Extras are beyond that, but I want to know that the movie I'm buying is the movie that I've seen previously and enjoyed.
LotR is one thing. They have additional scenes on the super fancy-pants versions. But they don't go changing the scenes you've already watched. LotR gave extras that we hadn't seen, ones that we can skip easily with the remote if we decide we don't like them, or even purchase the version that's identical to the theatrical release. With this, we STILL can't buy the theatrical release, and we don't even know if they're changing what we saw in the re-release. That's absolutely ridiculous.
However, given the way that LucasFilm has treated its fans, give it 3-4 years. We'll have the originals, untouched, on DVD, as a super special bonus edition at $90 just to bleed a little more out of those that bought this set. It makes me sad, I remember loving these movies as a kid. However, as a principle, I feel like buying any of these versions now gives LucasFilm validation to fuck with me and take every possible dollar they can out of my wallet. Screw 'em. I like the movies a lot, but they're not my favorites.
I'll miss 'em, but they're not good enough to bend over for.
Well, this isn't quite the same, but UCSD recently found that some of their machines were compromised. They sent out notices that, while there was no evidence to show that anyone's information had been taken, the compromise did put the attacker in a position where they could get ahold of students' and people who applied to be students' personal information, including social security numbers.
They sent notices to everyone who was in the system with instructions on how to protect themselves, and reported it to the local media. A San Diego Union-Tribune Article is here.
Admittedly, it's not the same, as a state-run university isn't the same as a traded company running a website, but they obviously felt it important to inform anyone who was potentially hurt by this.
Ahh, I don't believe those are available in the states, at least not via my cable company. I can get that Nascar thing that follows like 5 or 6 drivers with all that data (and I think radio communication), but I'm not a huge Nascar guy, so I haven't bothered to check that out.
As is, though, the default broadcast feed is pretty damn good these days, and the commentary has improved quite a bit on the US side, so I have no complaints and plan to stick with the default feed for now.
'Course, Toyota is occasionally reported as spending more than Ferrari, but it really hasn't gotten them very far. BAR also spent out the nose, and until this year, they were in just as bad of shape. It's nice to see that they finally managed to put all the pieces together and become a real team again.
Admittedly, I do think that if you *don't* have the money (Minardi), you cannot compete, but having the money doesn't mean that you can. Here's hoping Gascoyne can get a new chassis in for Toyota that has some real aerodynamics and make another team that's capable of winning a race.
Oh, and VERY cool on the BAR site, I just got myself a nice little BAR pit-crew shirt, so I'm a happy camper.
They sorta do this in F1, but really only the RPM. I don't believe the F1 teams are willing to share telemetry data like that, so they actually base the RPM on the in-car shot on the tone of the engine being picked up by the ambient microphones on the cars. It's reportedly "very accurate", but it's not a true reading of the car's actual RPM.
This is, all based on things heard from the commentary on Speed Channel here in the states, but I have no reason to doubt it.
Slashdot Mirror
Those BarStewards spend a lot of time and energy looking for ways to get past our spam filters. They know we don't want their stuff but they insist on subjecting us to it.
I used to work in the marketing department of our company (it was decided that the website was essentially the marketing arm of the service, so I was put in marketing to make it easier for them to get me to do stuff for them without having to go through the VP of IT...I've mercifully been put back in IT), and in my experience, they don't actually realize that.
More than once, I was asked how to avoid spam filters, since I was known as one of the people at the company who did a lot of work trying to filter my own spam. They said something very similar to "They don't know that they don't want to see our ads! These people don't know what they're missing, and they'll be happy to hear what we've got to offer!"
Combine that with what Scott Richter said on the Daily Show, and I think all spammers are essentially delusional. They honestly believe that their offer is so fantastic that they don't understand why someone *wouldn't* want to see it. They honestly believe that they're doing you a favor by evading your spam filter, that filter you put in place to get *everyone but them*, so that they can make your life better.
It's scary as hell, because, at least at my company, the delusion was definitely real. It made it nearly impossible to convince them to not use, as they put it, "e-mail based marketing", because they truly believe that everyone loves them.
I'm with you, a baseball bat is a good option. However, until spamming becomes not a financial windfall (our company was paying out $40-$60 a customer brought in by spam...considering how cheap it is to send, it's no wonder some people spam), people will keep doing it. We have to find out how to make spamming actually cost money if we really want it to end, or at least lessen.
Sorry for EXTREMELY slow response.
Generally, when you've got a car at the limit of adhesion, you're already turning the wheel to just the right amount for the angle you're going for, and you're near 100% of your tires' adhesion. At that point, turning the wheel more to turn sharper will just drive the front tires over 100%, making them wash out, you can actually turn *less* by turning the wheel farther into the turn because the tires break adhesion and start skidding, generally losing about 30% of their grip (if my memory of the Skip Barber lessons is correct).
Once you're at the limit, the steering wheel should be kept relatively steady through the corner, but the throttle and brake should be used to adjust the car's attitude. Get out of the throttle a bit to get the car to turn in sharper, get back into it harder to get the car to turn shallower. By shifting the weight forwards and backwards on the chassis, you're shifting the amount of traction between each set of wheels, and the car will react accordingly.
Similarly, when heading into a turn, there's a limit to the point where the steering wheel is effective, and if you want to improve your car's ability to turn in, give it just partial braking to shift weight to the front of the car.
The thing is, you're always going to turn the wheel to the optimum point for any given corner, and when you're right up at about 100% of the tires' traction, the only thing that will make any difference in the radius of the turn at that point is shifting weight between the fronts and the rears, and you do that via the throttle and brake.
I highly recommend "Going Faster! The Art of Race Driving" from the Skip Barber Racing School if you want to get a little more into that. The Gran Turismo 3 manual had a bit from that book, but it's no substitute for the book, just like simming is no substitute for the real thing.
Again, sorry for the 11-day late response.
I would imagine that, at this point, the vast majority of people buying it on Steam have already pre-loaded the game, as I had. I had the entire thing downloaded over a week ago, just sitting and waiting to be unlocked with what appeared to be only downloading some keys for decrypting, not any real content. The rest of them probably bought it retail, so they already have all of the files necessary, they just have to get the keys as well.
The only one that's getting me is that I didn't realize that I had to download HL1:Source as well, so now I've got that coming down. It seems to be handling it quite well.
I'm pretty certain, especially given the complete lack of activity on my Steam Monitor during the unlocking process, that once the unlock starts, it's not going over the network. It's just the process of decrypting the game files, and that's wholly processor dependent. I literally saw no traffic between my computer and Steam during the unlock process, but I had a hell of a lot of hard drive activity.
I think that's the reason reinstall is in "quotes", because users thought they were reinstalling it rather than just executing it without an icon. It's be awfully nice if I could actually install it, but I can't say that I've missed it. Now, if only I could remember how to get all my Windows Update stuff without IE, I'd be able to hide that thing forever...there's no way to take off an execute bit on it, is there?
This seems obvious to me, but somehow I doubt that Counter Strike teaches anyone how to kill more effectively than one would intuitively know given how a gun works.
I honestly don't see it being more effective to zigzag back and forth blasting wildly, all while screaming "CAMPING FAGORT!11!eleven!!", and bitching about AWPs than any non-CS player could be.
Back a little more on subject, I play a LOT of racing sims. They can teach a lot of the fundamentals. You learn things like the proper line around a track, how to use the throttle and brake to steer rather than relying on the steering wheel, etc etc. I do think it helps. However, it's no substitute for the real thing. That also, IMHO, applies in cases like this. You can learn some fundamentals like how to communicate and work in a group (as long as you're on a private server, good luck on a public one) and that taking the time to line up your shot is more effective than spraying like an idiot, but it's still not going to help you any more than a basic lesson on gun usage will, and certainly not going to make you an expert marksman or anything.
I actually have to go with the parent poster, because the vast majority of big-time spammers and the like use every method of tracking available to them. After being condemned to a marketing department at a .com for a couple of years, I learned all about conversion rates, bounties, etc etc. Spammers make their money more often these days via conversions, not eyeballs, so they track how many people actually sign up off a given e-mail.
The sad part is, it takes far less than 1% of spam victims to respond for the spammer to make money. It costs nearly nothing to send it, and some companies will pay upwards of $50 per conversion. Send it to a million people, 0.1% convert, that's $50K. Chances are, it cost a LOT less than $50K to blast 1 million e-mails out.
What is even sadder to me is that I think most people who actually convert on these things have probably willingly signed up for those "great deal offer bonus!" email lists. I don't think doing something with confirmed opt-in and the like would actually really hurt their business, those who demand not to be on the list won't buy anything from you anyway, merely on principle. When I get a spam about something I actually want, I generally won't buy the product at all anymore. It strikes me as a win-win situation: The spammer doesn't have to send as many emails, will still get about the same number of respondents, and the rest of us can live in peace.
Suffice it to say, I am no longer part of a marketing department, and for that I am eternally grateful.
The problem is, it's questionable as to whether or not he did break the law. He didn't break any of the specific laws, like saying the seven dirty words, he broke those same laws that define whether something is "art or pornography". It supposedly violated community standards, and was therefore indecent, though somehow it is not indecent when Oprah does it. I think his Loveline argument is flawed as the show, at least here on the west coast, airs from 10pm to midnight, which is in safe harbor.
I think a much more valid argument in his favor is that "community standards" should be dictated by the market. If it's so wildly offensive and indecent to the vast majority of the people listening to it, his ratings will suck and his show will go off the air. Given that he still has pretty good ratings, I think it's reasonable to conclude that a large portion of the American public don't consider his show obscene.
You obviously do not listen to the show (your previous posts about "accidentally stumbling on it" earlier notwithstanding). He doesn't say "f*ck", in fact, he doesn't say any of the seven dirty words, bleeps out callers who do say it, and generally yells at them until they stop doing it.
He follows all the concrete obscenity rules to the letter. The incidents in question all revolve around situations where he said things that were deemed to be indecent by "community standards", nothing that was clearly delineated as indecent or not.
The incident that caused Clear Channel to pull out was over a guy who was on the show talking about something involving anal sex. Recently, Oprah had a guest on who talked about that subject at length, and it regularly is a topic of conversation on Loveline, hence Stern's claim of a double-standard, where he's fined but neither Oprah nor Loveline are.
Yes, the show does go for shock value. However, it also has intelligent conversations. It's also often quite funny. And he doesn't say "f*ck". When I want just straight intelligent conversation, I listen to NPR instead (which I often do). The cool thing is, I have a choice as to which I like to listen to on any given morning. If I feel like laughing, I'll listen to Stern, otherwise I'll listen to NPR.
In the end, though, you're busy accusing Stern of doing things he doesn't do in order to make your point, however you don't listen to his show. I don't bash Rush Limbaugh's show because I don't listen to it...I don't know what I'm talking about. You might consider doing the same.
This is true (though more accurately, lately Viacom was fined), but the main thing he's been talking about lately is that they want to change it so that individual broadcasters can be fined, not just the company that runs the station. I wish I knew more of the specifics of it, but it's been one of his topics of conversation a lot recently.
Unless he's like some people who look down at their keyboard the whole time and are so used to typing their login and password that they just do it without even looking, then hit enter, only to see that nothing filled out on the page.
Admittedly, I don't think it's a large group, it only applies to people who can't touch type, don't look up at the screen when typing data they type on a regular basis, and use tabs. It's still something that should be fixed though, and I like the guy's idea from earlier: Don't let javascript on a tab execute unless that tab has focus.
Also, wouldn't the person have to hit enter to have the data even be passed to the exploiting site, and would that even work, or would the entry form grab focus instead of passing it off to the entry form's submit button? For the second exploit, wouldn't it not do anything useful at all if the user typed everything in, then used the mouse to click the submit button?
At least know what you're talking about before calling someone shit-for-brains.
c kets/tickets.html
"Studio Location: Daily Show Studios, 513 West 54th Street, NY. Between 10th and 11th Avenues."
-- http://www.nytix.com/TVShows/NewYork/DailyShow/Ti
and...
"The Daily Show tapes every Monday through Thursday at the Daily Show studios, located at 513 West 54th Street, New York City. Doors open at 5:45 PM. Audience members must be 18 or over to attend (tickets are required for attendance)."
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Show
If you can't seem to gather a clue on your own, perhaps you can find somewhere to purchase one?
I'm wary of blaming on a specific country or people, but there is a point to this, and it all goes back to that old cliche of "you get what you pay for".
Now, this is not to say that you're just going to get a worse product out of someone. I know a number of programmers who have since moved back to India since their H1-Bs went out, and of the ones I had the pleasure to work with, the vast majority are better than most American programmers I know. However, you pay less in exchange for difficulty in communication, time differences, the lack of ability to directly oversee the process without a long flight, etc. While I do not consider myself a rabid capitalist, the reason that labor and the like is higher here in the US is because the returns/expenses involved are better. Eventually the pendulum will swing, too many events like this will happen, and jobs will start heading back to the US.
In the meantime, those who truly *want* to code or whatever for a living will continue to improve themselves and be plenty good enough to hire, and those that did it to get rich will find the next big thing to get rich on. And so it continues.
Six Flags had the same problem with a ride out here in the Los Angeles area called "X". Amazing ride, has seats that rotate independently of the train, so it can do things like flip the seats while going through a long airtime hill. Good stuff. Unfortunately, it was down a lot. After opening late, it had a 6-month downtime, then was regularly closed, probably at least half of the days since then. When it wasn't, it had 3-4 hour waits. However, Six Flags never once bothered to put any sort of X Status on their webpages, refused to answer any questions on its status when called, and half the time, didn't even list the ride as closed at the front gates when it was down. Despite living 15 minutes from Six Flags, and being a bit of a coaster nut, I don't really go there anymore...
'Cept that S:TE at Magic Mountain hasn't made it to 100mph since the day it opened, goes up more like 31 stories (they measure the tower from the ground to the top, but the station is already a good 70-80 feet higher than the ground under the tower, due to it being on a hill), and hasn't run for just about the entire year this year.
I do like S:TE, but it can't compare to really any of the major launched coasters since it was built.
Bah, Gemini isn't a wooden coaster! It's got a wooden frame, but them's steel rails on it :)
I made it to Cedar Point last year, but the weather was so bad that essentially nothing was running, and ended up not getting to ride much of anything at all. I've ridden Top Thrill's prototype, Xcelerator at Knott's Berry Farm, and it's absolutely fantastic. One of these days I'll make it out east again and get to play on TTD and Kingda Ka.
However, some of the more scrupulous (did I just say that?) spammers will remove emails that don't seem to ever open those little tracking images and the like before selling them off. Old email addresses *do* eventually lessen their spam load, but they'll never lose it.
In the end, I think his point is that that email is probably less likely to have been picked up by all the more recent spam-related worms and the like, so it shouldn't be viewed in the same light as currently used addresses that potential virus victims might have in their address book. As is, I get many, many bounces sent to my (now retired) work e-mail because business contacts, with that email in their address book, got infected by the multitude of spammer worms.
Same here, I've got a 7th generation Toyota Celica and it's got a digital readout for the odometer. I wonder what they do to protect that....
Ideally, I would imagine with the asymetric gear thing, you could always just roll back the odometer to zero at some point, then try to put the miles back onto it. That wouldn't really work for insurance (unless you rolled it to 0 after every time it was checked, then made it a point to drive more every year than the previous year), but it might work for selling the car.
They had a blurb about this thing, and Progressive's plan to use it, on one of our local news radio stations. They were saying that the time you drive would be a major factor in your insurance premiums. I guess things like this are out of the question for anyone who works odd hours or is on call 24/7 for things that might require a drive to work.
"No, I can't come in and fix the server, it'll cost me a fortune on my car insurance."
I enjoyed the star wars films, and while I'm not a huge star wars fan, I was most likely going to pick these up.
Then I read the same bit you quoted.
That's crap. They're complaining in the article that they're not the highest forecasted sellers for this holiday season because it's $70, and blaming it on that. Maybe it has something to do with:
a) not releasing the original versions, the ones that everyone really wants to see and
b) telling them to pay $70, yet refusing to tell them what they're actually getting, so they can "check them out for themselves."
When I buy a DVD, I damn well want to know what I'm getting. Extras are beyond that, but I want to know that the movie I'm buying is the movie that I've seen previously and enjoyed.
LotR is one thing. They have additional scenes on the super fancy-pants versions. But they don't go changing the scenes you've already watched. LotR gave extras that we hadn't seen, ones that we can skip easily with the remote if we decide we don't like them, or even purchase the version that's identical to the theatrical release. With this, we STILL can't buy the theatrical release, and we don't even know if they're changing what we saw in the re-release. That's absolutely ridiculous.
However, given the way that LucasFilm has treated its fans, give it 3-4 years. We'll have the originals, untouched, on DVD, as a super special bonus edition at $90 just to bleed a little more out of those that bought this set. It makes me sad, I remember loving these movies as a kid. However, as a principle, I feel like buying any of these versions now gives LucasFilm validation to fuck with me and take every possible dollar they can out of my wallet. Screw 'em. I like the movies a lot, but they're not my favorites.
I'll miss 'em, but they're not good enough to bend over for.
Well, this isn't quite the same, but UCSD recently found that some of their machines were compromised. They sent out notices that, while there was no evidence to show that anyone's information had been taken, the compromise did put the attacker in a position where they could get ahold of students' and people who applied to be students' personal information, including social security numbers.
They sent notices to everyone who was in the system with instructions on how to protect themselves, and reported it to the local media. A San Diego Union-Tribune Article is here.
Admittedly, it's not the same, as a state-run university isn't the same as a traded company running a website, but they obviously felt it important to inform anyone who was potentially hurt by this.
Ahh, I don't believe those are available in the states, at least not via my cable company. I can get that Nascar thing that follows like 5 or 6 drivers with all that data (and I think radio communication), but I'm not a huge Nascar guy, so I haven't bothered to check that out.
As is, though, the default broadcast feed is pretty damn good these days, and the commentary has improved quite a bit on the US side, so I have no complaints and plan to stick with the default feed for now.
'Course, Toyota is occasionally reported as spending more than Ferrari, but it really hasn't gotten them very far. BAR also spent out the nose, and until this year, they were in just as bad of shape. It's nice to see that they finally managed to put all the pieces together and become a real team again.
Admittedly, I do think that if you *don't* have the money (Minardi), you cannot compete, but having the money doesn't mean that you can. Here's hoping Gascoyne can get a new chassis in for Toyota that has some real aerodynamics and make another team that's capable of winning a race.
Oh, and VERY cool on the BAR site, I just got myself a nice little BAR pit-crew shirt, so I'm a happy camper.
They sorta do this in F1, but really only the RPM. I don't believe the F1 teams are willing to share telemetry data like that, so they actually base the RPM on the in-car shot on the tone of the engine being picked up by the ambient microphones on the cars. It's reportedly "very accurate", but it's not a true reading of the car's actual RPM.
This is, all based on things heard from the commentary on Speed Channel here in the states, but I have no reason to doubt it.