What the **AA still are not telling us is how and where they found what proof (if any) that P2P file sharing is hurting their business, nor have the quantified how the quality of their product taints that estimate. Remember that old adage about comparing apples and oranges?
Now, factor in the damage done by Radiohead or NIN. How does that affect their bottom line, and tell me in dollars and cents because wild ass guesses are not good enough in a court of law where they are claiming dollar and cent damages.
Better still, if they are %200+ wrong on their calculations for damages, couldn't that be called criminal? I had always been told that lying in court is a criminal offence.
I believe that a court of law should question any claim of damage that does not account for losses due to other natural business related damage to revenue. Seriously, if they can not quantify their losses due to having crap products, their estimate of losses due to copyright theft is just noise, and stinks like it was made by escaping gases from their collective asses.
Never mind ex post facto for a minute. The Protect America Act has been in place how long? What has it accomplished? What? For all these rights that have been trampled, what has been gained? What? Name one positive good outcome from it?
Perhaps it's time to remind your representatives that you want some ROI here. My constitutional rights are very expensive. If their abuse of my rights does not land bin laden in jail, or bolster the free world by some provably huge fscking margin, then I'm going to want to see rolling heads. So far... I'm thinking of rolling heads (figuratively speaking... say hello to the nice FBI agents)
the next time that you are called a 'white' by someone that insists blacks are African Americans, you might find it fun to insist that they call you 'slave trader' American, or remind them that the abbreviation for African American is AA. Perhaps reminding them that Lincoln tried to ship them back to Africa will give them some humility? History is so full of fun facts. If they pull out the term caucasian, you would do well to remind them that 'whites' are NOT from the caucasus islands. Another fun little fact of life: in Africa they are also prejudiced against one another by skin color. Yes, light vs dark, or one tribe versus another, one country vs. another. That kind of solidarity of dark skinned people ONLY happens in North America, so exactly what kind of African American are they? and what tribe do they support? Personally, I'm Anglo-Saxon American, I'm listed in the DAR (revolutionary American), and I just prefer that you call me by my name...
On those little quizzes, always select 'other' as the discussion as to why you chose other can be lots of fun. Its a racial question that does not account for South Americans, mulatto etc. If your grandfather was black, your grandmother was chinese and your mother was south american, what race do you belong to? How do you answer the quiz? select 3 or more categories?
That is exactly the attitude that I see in the world around me. People install Symantec and then think (without regard to whether the software license is up to date or not) that it should stop any kind of malicious software or hacking attempt ever.
That kind of thinking is the FAULT of Symantec et al. Yet, these same people would not drink old milk, or trust an aging condom? Go figure.
I have put some thought into this problem via a hobby of robotics, and consequently have read quite a few papers etc.
The trouble with this can be summed up like this: Would you typically go through your day with a 6 year old, giving the 6yr old instructions on who to dial, what emails to send etc.?
No? Then you can forget the voice recognition stuff. Voice recognition substitutes What? for the typical 6yr old's Why?
There are a lot of people who have VR dialing on their phone now. Do you ever see anyone using it? Wonder why?
but does anyone know of a good website that is tracking this type of information? Some place that has it all laid out, so when we hear of a politician in the news we can quickly look up what they are responsible for, and their vote record etc. ?
We need to push back on every intrusion, no matter how small, into our daily lives by government. If they want to test the effectiveness of such programs, I'm all for the legislators that vote it in to be the test bed. Let all senators and congressmen and their staff be the test bed, oh, and the whitehouse staff also. When these people are being tracked by commercial entities and the results displayed for all to see, then maybe we'll see the real reasons for it in the first place.
Yes, I just want to hear one of them say that they don't want to participate because of the intrusion into their lives.
After 3-5 years of the testing, then lets decide if all citizens really need it.
outsourced to India, can we look forward to seeing incarnations of Hindu gods? Or perhaps a call center rep that can simultaneously use two headsets, hold two conversations, and use to computers at the same time to read from two poorly written support scripts?
And where, oh where, does a two-headed marmoset controlled domestic robot fall in Islamic law?
I do NOT watch television, and despise broadcast television. It is difficult for me at times when I have to explain to people things like: No, I've not seen that beer commercial, and no, I don't know what a soup nazi is, who is Kramer?
You can hide your kids from games all you want, but if all their friends are playing them, you are effectively isolating them from the social circles they should be able to take part in.
I have to try to learn stuff about television happenings over the weekend so I don't look too stupid on Monday in the break room. If you kid has to pretend he knows what everyone is talking about, it's an ostracizing effect.
Technically, when they are old enough that you trust them to stay over at a friends house, they are old enough for games unless you are going to ensure that your kid's friend's parents are going to prohibit game playing while your kid stays with them.
Within 6 months, the Spy Store has a portable EMP generator to rid you of any flying spy devices. It will look like an odd cellphone and work like a radar gun that the police use.
zzzzzzZZZzzttttt and the 'fly' becomes a lay still and collect dust
Actually, they could have scored a huge boost in credibility *IF* they had said, wait! We'll pay for the NH recounts because we are certain our machines are good, and if anything is found to be wrong, we'll fix it before the next primary or caucus.
But that is not what they did... instead, there was a conversation in a darkened back room somewhere that went something like this:
Politician: I thought you said it would be undetectable? Company Rep: I thought you said we'd not be prosecuted? Politician: You didn't say you'd fsck it up this badly. Company Rep: I did what you told me you wanted, give or take a couple of votes.
Politician: This is not going to be good, you had better hide the evidence now, bury it deeply. Company Rep: No problem, we just paid Britney another $2 Million to pee on the courthouse steps.
Although there is some sense to what you are suggesting, there is still one problem: Unlimited MEANS unlimited. If you sell users an unlimited plan, it is UNLIMITED. If you sell them that plan then decide that it is only unlimited for certain types of traffic packets, well, that is just not legal. If you buy a car, you have reasonable expectations that it will work on ALL highways. If you buy an unlimited Internet plan, you have reasonable expectations that it will work for all Internet protocol types and traffic.
If they want to sell a plan that does not permit P2P protocols, fine as long as that is what it says up front. If they want to sell a plan that only allows 10KB per month, no problem (good luck with that btw) and other such things. The trouble is that they sell unlimited plans, and their real problem is that they didn't think anyone would use the unlimited part. You know, customers get tired of trying to connect, so just don't use the service too much, then it's all good.
Now, if the reason for wanting to filter is ONLY to help the **AA and/or government types to find out things about you, well... burn the witches in hell I say. Better yet, switch services, let the shareholders burn them. I switched, as fast as I could when AT&T merged with Cingular. Do you need a daddy? AT&T wants to be your Ma Bell?
This is the Librarian wing of the JSA testing new paper for books. This paper, obviously with embedded copy protection coatings, will prove that books are better than websites, and gloriously launch the Japanese people to a state of technological superiority over western libraries. This is just stage one of the Paper Ninja Warriors contest.
Stage two involves plasma thrusters and a "paper moon" orbiter. When you can afford to launch 14 million orbital vehicles, one of them is bound to accomplish the job. Besides, what better building material to use if you want to send a message to aliens in other galaxies?
I know I'm a bit ahead of the calendar on this, but there is one thing that the French did right - Bastille Day is how they celebrate it. Now, I'm not advocating that anyone use their second amendment rights to do anything rash, but now might be a good time to buy some ammo from Walmart.
I am not a web browser tester but... lately Firefox seems to be performing much better than it used to. It's still using a bit of memory, but I'm not getting any crashes, or aberrant behaviors. The worst I've noticed in months is Foxmarks sucking the life out of my cpu when synchronizing, but that can be monitored/avoided.
Literally the only time I've been annoyed with FF in a year is having to load IE6/7 to open a website that refused to recognize FF using IETab. And in that case, it's not FF that annoys me. I'd put the coder of that site on the DHS watchlist if I could!@@#$%@$#%
That might be true, and I like to think of PERL is to coding like LEGO is to model building. Sometimes it's nice to have a pretty and efficient function to hand (PERL Module) and other times it's just a case of build your own. With LEGO you don't have to build the tires, but the car is going to look home made.
Actually, evolution developed the camel and the horse for different environments, but that is not really the issue.
PERL6, like those before it, is just a tool. It will either work or not. Some don't like PERL because it can be messy and perhaps unstructured. I submit to you that some coders can make a mess of any language. PERL has its advantages, and like everything else, its disadvantages.
I too will use PERL6, no matter what name it is given. I find PERL is quite useful, and I presume that many others do also as it still seems to be relevant to all but the prophets of the latest Web2.0 gizzmo language thingies.
In any case, a hammer is a hammer, and when you have to drive some nails... well, damnit, use a hammer.
"A giant self-destructing palm tree [CC] has been discovered in Madagascar. The palm is 20m (60ft) high with leaves 5m (16ft) long, the tallest tree of its type in the country, but for most of its life -- around 100 years -- it appears fairly unremarkable apart from its size. However, when it flowers, it puts so much energy into an impressive flower-spike, that it eventually collapses and dies. Dr John Dransfield, who announced the tree in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, is baffled as to how the it came to be in the country. It bears a resemblance to a species of palm found in regions of Asia; 6,000km away. It is thought that the palm has gone through a remarkable evolution since Madagascar split with India some 80m years ago." This should have been called the Valentines Palm Tree, then we could blame it existence on early biology R&D engineers at Hallmark, because we ALL know that evolution is ONLY a theory and this tree/plant can't be more than about 10,000 years old.
I'm thinking that if they wanted to go to the 'heart rate on the review' end of things it would be most interesting to see everyone from mid-manager level upwards on the machines too.
Of course this might also work for that woman who said "help, I've fallen and can't get up" and others like that. I'm sure that if this is not already in use in Japan, it soon will be. They are doing a lot to assist their aging population.
OTOH, if you are required to be monitored to get behind the wheel of your car, that could be something entirely different. Question: Do you really want Microsoft to be responsible for such an event?
This announcement was misinterpreted by almost everyone. This was supposed to be titled: Roadmap for OOXML. Those crazy marketing-droids got it mixed up again... hmmmmm
funny thought just occurred to me: Religion used to come all bundled together in a single package in the form of the Roman Catholic Church. Now we have the King James version of the bible, and also the Church of England as a result of the un-bundling process. Sometimes you need force to ensure that the un-bundling happens! Perhaps it's not good to mention MS and religion in the same paragraph, but I think the analogy is good here. When there is only one official version of the declared legitimate bible, it takes serious effort to show that another version is just as good, or even easier to use etc.
In fact, there was more than one Monarch that was a bit upset to see their countries liquid cash assets going to the ruler of another country. In the EU, there might be more than one reason to not like MS.
Let's face it, you would need king like authority to do any serious changing of the US or the world in a single term. Having said that, Here is what I'd like to see changed:
1 - Undeclare all the wars; war on terror, war on drugs, war on want/poverty, NCLB, etc... In other words, stop fighting wars on moralistic/neoconservative crap that furthers the neocon agenda. 2 - set up a academic type trust or board (5 members from each state not including educational institution members) to go back to the constitution and re-evalute EVERY fucking law that has been made since. Hope that states would follow suit. The goal being to slim it down, get rid of stupid laws. 3 - Do similar to scrap and replace the current tax system (taxes pay for some good stuff, but we don't need that much taxation if we don't pay for bad stuff) -- simplified explaination. 4 - delete Fox News from the US, and from History... ok, that's wrong, but it might be fun to try 5 - Enforce open government from the top down
6 - Try to stay alive long enough to run in the next election
Slashdot Mirror
Wait for it....
What the **AA still are not telling us is how and where they found what proof (if any) that P2P file sharing is hurting their business, nor have the quantified how the quality of their product taints that estimate. Remember that old adage about comparing apples and oranges?
Now, factor in the damage done by Radiohead or NIN. How does that affect their bottom line, and tell me in dollars and cents because wild ass guesses are not good enough in a court of law where they are claiming dollar and cent damages.
Better still, if they are %200+ wrong on their calculations for damages, couldn't that be called criminal? I had always been told that lying in court is a criminal offence.
I believe that a court of law should question any claim of damage that does not account for losses due to other natural business related damage to revenue. Seriously, if they can not quantify their losses due to having crap products, their estimate of losses due to copyright theft is just noise, and stinks like it was made by escaping gases from their collective asses.
Never mind ex post facto for a minute. The Protect America Act has been in place how long? What has it accomplished? What? For all these rights that have been trampled, what has been gained? What? Name one positive good outcome from it?
Perhaps it's time to remind your representatives that you want some ROI here. My constitutional rights are very expensive. If their abuse of my rights does not land bin laden in jail, or bolster the free world by some provably huge fscking margin, then I'm going to want to see rolling heads. So far... I'm thinking of rolling heads (figuratively speaking... say hello to the nice FBI agents)
the next time that you are called a 'white' by someone that insists blacks are African Americans, you might find it fun to insist that they call you 'slave trader' American, or remind them that the abbreviation for African American is AA. Perhaps reminding them that Lincoln tried to ship them back to Africa will give them some humility? History is so full of fun facts. If they pull out the term caucasian, you would do well to remind them that 'whites' are NOT from the caucasus islands. Another fun little fact of life: in Africa they are also prejudiced against one another by skin color. Yes, light vs dark, or one tribe versus another, one country vs. another. That kind of solidarity of dark skinned people ONLY happens in North America, so exactly what kind of African American are they? and what tribe do they support? Personally, I'm Anglo-Saxon American, I'm listed in the DAR (revolutionary American), and I just prefer that you call me by my name...
On those little quizzes, always select 'other' as the discussion as to why you chose other can be lots of fun. Its a racial question that does not account for South Americans, mulatto etc. If your grandfather was black, your grandmother was chinese and your mother was south american, what race do you belong to? How do you answer the quiz? select 3 or more categories?
ALL PC terms are insulting.
That is exactly the attitude that I see in the world around me. People install Symantec and then think (without regard to whether the software license is up to date or not) that it should stop any kind of malicious software or hacking attempt ever.
That kind of thinking is the FAULT of Symantec et al. Yet, these same people would not drink old milk, or trust an aging condom? Go figure.
I have put some thought into this problem via a hobby of robotics, and consequently have read quite a few papers etc.
The trouble with this can be summed up like this: Would you typically go through your day with a 6 year old, giving the 6yr old instructions on who to dial, what emails to send etc.?
No? Then you can forget the voice recognition stuff. Voice recognition substitutes What? for the typical 6yr old's Why?
There are a lot of people who have VR dialing on their phone now. Do you ever see anyone using it? Wonder why?
but does anyone know of a good website that is tracking this type of information? Some place that has it all laid out, so when we hear of a politician in the news we can quickly look up what they are responsible for, and their vote record etc. ?
Exactly right...
We need to push back on every intrusion, no matter how small, into our daily lives by government. If they want to test the effectiveness of such programs, I'm all for the legislators that vote it in to be the test bed. Let all senators and congressmen and their staff be the test bed, oh, and the whitehouse staff also. When these people are being tracked by commercial entities and the results displayed for all to see, then maybe we'll see the real reasons for it in the first place.
Yes, I just want to hear one of them say that they don't want to participate because of the intrusion into their lives.
After 3-5 years of the testing, then lets decide if all citizens really need it.
outsourced to India, can we look forward to seeing incarnations of Hindu gods? Or perhaps a call center rep that can simultaneously use two headsets, hold two conversations, and use to computers at the same time to read from two poorly written support scripts?
And where, oh where, does a two-headed marmoset controlled domestic robot fall in Islamic law?
I do NOT watch television, and despise broadcast television. It is difficult for me at times when I have to explain to people things like: No, I've not seen that beer commercial, and no, I don't know what a soup nazi is, who is Kramer?
You can hide your kids from games all you want, but if all their friends are playing them, you are effectively isolating them from the social circles they should be able to take part in.
I have to try to learn stuff about television happenings over the weekend so I don't look too stupid on Monday in the break room. If you kid has to pretend he knows what everyone is talking about, it's an ostracizing effect.
Technically, when they are old enough that you trust them to stay over at a friends house, they are old enough for games unless you are going to ensure that your kid's friend's parents are going to prohibit game playing while your kid stays with them.
So, to get IE8 to behave nice, web developers are responsible? huh?
Within 6 months, the Spy Store has a portable EMP generator to rid you of any flying spy devices. It will look like an odd cellphone and work like a radar gun that the police use.
zzzzzzZZZzzttttt and the 'fly' becomes a lay still and collect dust
Actually, they could have scored a huge boost in credibility *IF* they had said, wait! We'll pay for the NH recounts because we are certain our machines are good, and if anything is found to be wrong, we'll fix it before the next primary or caucus.
But that is not what they did... instead, there was a conversation in a darkened back room somewhere that went something like this:
Politician: I thought you said it would be undetectable?
Company Rep: I thought you said we'd not be prosecuted?
Politician: You didn't say you'd fsck it up this badly.
Company Rep: I did what you told me you wanted, give or take a couple of votes.
Politician: This is not going to be good, you had better hide the evidence now, bury it deeply.
Company Rep: No problem, we just paid Britney another $2 Million to pee on the courthouse steps.
profit!
She is labeled an International Terrorist, since they can't out her husband as a spy
10... 9... 8...
Although there is some sense to what you are suggesting, there is still one problem: Unlimited MEANS unlimited. If you sell users an unlimited plan, it is UNLIMITED. If you sell them that plan then decide that it is only unlimited for certain types of traffic packets, well, that is just not legal. If you buy a car, you have reasonable expectations that it will work on ALL highways. If you buy an unlimited Internet plan, you have reasonable expectations that it will work for all Internet protocol types and traffic.
If they want to sell a plan that does not permit P2P protocols, fine as long as that is what it says up front. If they want to sell a plan that only allows 10KB per month, no problem (good luck with that btw) and other such things. The trouble is that they sell unlimited plans, and their real problem is that they didn't think anyone would use the unlimited part. You know, customers get tired of trying to connect, so just don't use the service too much, then it's all good.
Now, if the reason for wanting to filter is ONLY to help the **AA and/or government types to find out things about you, well... burn the witches in hell I say. Better yet, switch services, let the shareholders burn them. I switched, as fast as I could when AT&T merged with Cingular. Do you need a daddy? AT&T wants to be your Ma Bell?
This is the Librarian wing of the JSA testing new paper for books. This paper, obviously with embedded copy protection coatings, will prove that books are better than websites, and gloriously launch the Japanese people to a state of technological superiority over western libraries. This is just stage one of the Paper Ninja Warriors contest.
Stage two involves plasma thrusters and a "paper moon" orbiter. When you can afford to launch 14 million orbital vehicles, one of them is bound to accomplish the job. Besides, what better building material to use if you want to send a message to aliens in other galaxies?
I know I'm a bit ahead of the calendar on this, but there is one thing that the French did right - Bastille Day is how they celebrate it. Now, I'm not advocating that anyone use their second amendment rights to do anything rash, but now might be a good time to buy some ammo from Walmart.
I am not a web browser tester but... lately Firefox seems to be performing much better than it used to. It's still using a bit of memory, but I'm not getting any crashes, or aberrant behaviors. The worst I've noticed in months is Foxmarks sucking the life out of my cpu when synchronizing, but that can be monitored/avoided.
Literally the only time I've been annoyed with FF in a year is having to load IE6/7 to open a website that refused to recognize FF using IETab. And in that case, it's not FF that annoys me. I'd put the coder of that site on the DHS watchlist if I could!@@#$%@$#%
That might be true, and I like to think of PERL is to coding like LEGO is to model building. Sometimes it's nice to have a pretty and efficient function to hand (PERL Module) and other times it's just a case of build your own. With LEGO you don't have to build the tires, but the car is going to look home made.
Actually, evolution developed the camel and the horse for different environments, but that is not really the issue.
PERL6, like those before it, is just a tool. It will either work or not. Some don't like PERL because it can be messy and perhaps unstructured. I submit to you that some coders can make a mess of any language. PERL has its advantages, and like everything else, its disadvantages.
I too will use PERL6, no matter what name it is given. I find PERL is quite useful, and I presume that many others do also as it still seems to be relevant to all but the prophets of the latest Web2.0 gizzmo language thingies.
In any case, a hammer is a hammer, and when you have to drive some nails... well, damnit, use a hammer.
I'm thinking that if they wanted to go to the 'heart rate on the review' end of things it would be most interesting to see everyone from mid-manager level upwards on the machines too.
Of course this might also work for that woman who said "help, I've fallen and can't get up" and others like that. I'm sure that if this is not already in use in Japan, it soon will be. They are doing a lot to assist their aging population.
OTOH, if you are required to be monitored to get behind the wheel of your car, that could be something entirely different. Question: Do you really want Microsoft to be responsible for such an event?
This announcement was misinterpreted by almost everyone. This was supposed to be titled: Roadmap for OOXML. Those crazy marketing-droids got it mixed up again... hmmmmm
funny thought just occurred to me: Religion used to come all bundled together in a single package in the form of the Roman Catholic Church. Now we have the King James version of the bible, and also the Church of England as a result of the un-bundling process. Sometimes you need force to ensure that the un-bundling happens! Perhaps it's not good to mention MS and religion in the same paragraph, but I think the analogy is good here. When there is only one official version of the declared legitimate bible, it takes serious effort to show that another version is just as good, or even easier to use etc.
In fact, there was more than one Monarch that was a bit upset to see their countries liquid cash assets going to the ruler of another country. In the EU, there might be more than one reason to not like MS.
Let's face it, you would need king like authority to do any serious changing of the US or the world in a single term. Having said that, Here is what I'd like to see changed:
1 - Undeclare all the wars; war on terror, war on drugs, war on want/poverty, NCLB, etc... In other words, stop fighting wars on moralistic/neoconservative crap that furthers the neocon agenda.
2 - set up a academic type trust or board (5 members from each state not including educational institution members) to go back to the constitution and re-evalute EVERY fucking law that has been made since. Hope that states would follow suit. The goal being to slim it down, get rid of stupid laws.
3 - Do similar to scrap and replace the current tax system (taxes pay for some good stuff, but we don't need that much taxation if we don't pay for bad stuff) -- simplified explaination.
4 - delete Fox News from the US, and from History... ok, that's wrong, but it might be fun to try
5 - Enforce open government from the top down
6 - Try to stay alive long enough to run in the next election
Well said, I agree with you. My bad